


September Free Writing

by Goose_Goddess



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, James Bond (Craig movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 30
Words: 48,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Goddess/pseuds/Goose_Goddess
Summary: Random story-a-day based on the Whumptober prompts from 2019.
Relationships: James Bond/Q, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Peter Parker/Wade Wilson, Spiderman/Deadpool
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	1. Shaky Hands

**Author's Note:**

> I hate free writing. I know it's supposed to be a good warm up, but every time I try it ends up either being the same word typed over and over (and over), or me just writing how much I hate stream of consciousness writing. So, I decided to spend September writing 750 words of random fanfiction. So I searched out the prompts for last years (2019) Whumptober and decided I'd write a minimum of 750 words on whatever occurs to me based on the word or phrase of the day. Looking over the list, it promises to be a little dark. We'll see how it goes.
> 
> Since it's what I like to read, you're probably going to see 00Q, SpideyPool, Merthur, and/or Sterek. I'll try and tag each chapter appropriately.
> 
> WARNING: This is not planned, not beta'd, not edited. Read at your own risk.

Peter leaned against the wall and tried to breathe. For some reason, his lungs didn’t seem to be working today. He rolled his head back against the wall, staring up into the dark sky. No stars. Never were. Even on clear nights, the light pollution meant that it was just black and empty. They were there, though. Somewhere up above the light pollution and the actual pollution. Just hidden. 

He gulped in a breath that hurt going down. But then the next one was better, and the one after that almost normal. He closed his eyes and just breathed a few seconds longer. Then he realized he couldn’t wait any longer. Even if he hadn’t called the cops, someone would have. If he didn’t want to be here when they arrived, he had to move. 

He pulled his head forward, eyes still closed, and tipped his head down, too shaken to look yet. He’d already seen it, _him_ , once. He didn’t really want to see him again. Not like this. But he couldn’t leave him here either. The cops would call the Avengers or the X-Men or someone and he’d end up locked up, at least for a while. He had to get both of them out of here before anyone showed up.

He opened his eyes slowly, trying to at least keep breathing, hoping it wasn’t as bad as he remembered. If anything, it was worse now. 

Wade’s body was in three pieces. Three pieces. How did that even happen? He hadn’t even been patrolling with Peter tonight. He’d needed to go help a friend out with a job (no un-aliving, though, Baby Boy, I won’t forget). Peter’d been out alone when he swung down into this alley to stop some creep who was threatening one of the shop owners in the building.

He’d gotten the creeps’ attention, and the shop owner had fled. And then… Peter still wasn’t sure what had happened. One minute he was webbing the guy to the wall, and the next he was nearly knocked over by how hard his spider sense went off. He spun around and found himself facing an entire herd (flock? Swarm?) of giant beetles. They were waist high, and their pincers were strong and sharp. Webbing didn’t do much good, they just sliced themselves loose. He would have run, but he couldn’t leave the guy he’d webbed up defenseless. 

He frantically fought them, trying to keep any from getting past him. He grabbed and threw them, trying to keep himself out of reach of those grabbing pincers. Punching seemed to at least stun them, but punching meant somehow getting past the pincers. Harder than you’d think. 

He was just starting to panic when he heard a thud behind him, with no additional zing of warning, so it wasn’t another creepy crawly that had gotten around him.

“Looks like the cockroaches got tired of living on scraps.” He heard Wade behind him laughing, and a minute later he heard the clang of metal on carapace. 

The two of them together managed to tie up or kill all the creepy crawlies. Peter turned to face Wade, wanting to thank him for showing up. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to take care of all of them by himself. He reached out to clap Wade on the shoulder, grinning in relief. 

Wade’s eyes widened (how does he do that in his mask?) and he grabbed Peter’s arm and swung him around behind him, nearly slamming Peter into the wall. Peter looked at him in surprise and then horror as one of the (formerly) tied up roaches snatched Wade and sliced his body in half. Falling to the ground, Wade swung his blade around and sliced off the roaches head. But not before it closed its mandibles around his leg and sliced it off at the hip.

And now, here was Peter staring at three pieces of Wade. He’d come back. Peter knew it. Well, he knew it, but he didn’t really _know_ it. It’s one thing to be told something impossible happens. It’s somehow harder to believe it. And Wade had died just to save Peter’s life. It wasn’t the first time; he’d saved Peter’s life so many times at this point it was really kind of a joke. But he’d never died doing it. Peter had never _seen_ him die. 

Peter dropped to his knees and reached out one badly shaking hand, not even sure how to go about picking up the pieces. There was so much blood. He pulled on the leg and dragged it over to a somewhat clean spot, then pulled the other pieces over, webbing all the parts into a single package. He realized he was crying only when he couldn’t see enough to grab onto the bundle he’d made. He reached out, now both his hands were shaking. It took a minute between eyes not working and hands shaking too hard to actually find the bundle. But finally his hands landed on it. He let out a sob and pulled the bundle into his arms. Not sure what to do next. A body in pieces, even strapped up in webbing, was awkward to handle. He ran his arm across his nose, then realized his mask was in the way. And the inside was getting disgusting. He pulled the bundle closer to himself, then dropped to his knees. He attached a web to one end of the… bundle. Then, trying not to sob, he turned and pulled the web over his shoulder and across his body, then attached it to the other end of the bundle. A few more quick _thwips_ and Wade was firmly attached to his back. 

He stood slowly and looked around the alley. It was full of dead roaches, and shiny with blood. Somehow the creep he’d webbed up had gotten loose and taken off. Nothing left alive except himself. Nothing left here for him. Taking a deep breath, he webbed himself up into the air and headed towards home. He would not leave Wade here, and he wasn’t going to leave him at Wade’s apartment to recover. He wasn’t going to leave him _alone_.


	2. Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompts all seem to indicate violence and pain, and I really wanted to write something a little softer. So I asked my daughter to help me out with ideas for explosions that didn't cause pain, and she immediately rattled of a list. So here's a 5 +1 of explosions.

1 - Color

Peter made most of his money with his photography, taking pictures for the Daily Bugle. But, given the opportunity, he much preferred photographing random beauty around the city to superheroes and celebrities. Fortunately for him, his phone camera had gotten so good he could always have a camera with him when he came across something he wanted to capture.

Today was a lucky day for him, because for a change the photos he’d been sent out to get were something he wanted to photograph. He was standing at the finish line of the Color Run in Citi Field snapping photo after photo of a runner crossing the finish line, coated in brilliant bursts of colored dye. Audience members with small packets of powdered dye occasionally threw them like color grenades at the passing runners, coating everyone in an explosion of red or green or blue. 

Peter did his best to protect his camera and his lens, but he looked down grinning and realized his shirt was definitely not going to survive this job. The dye was floating everywhere and immediately soaking in bright blossoms where he was damp with sweat from standing in the sun. Good thing he’d worn an old shirt. 

He shrugged. It might mean pitching the shirt, but the bright sun brought the color impact to a whole new level. The pictures would be worth it.

2 - Fireworks

Photographing fireworks is a challenge. Takes a lot of prep work, and a decent camera. Fortunately, Peter had done this more than once. And being Spiderman gave him a bit of an advantage over other people. He wasn’t limited as much on location, since he could easily set up on any rooftop he’d wanted. So he already knew which roof had the best view of the river where they were going to set off the fireworks. In addition, photographing meant he had to stay far enough away to frame good shots without too much smoke. It just happened that being that far away meant he didn’t have to deal with the noise of the fireworks, or the crowds lining the riverbanks and parks closer to the river.

Only drawback was, if he didn’t want anyone to find out Peter Parker was Spiderman, he couldn’t let anyone see him up here. Not that too many people were likely to bump into him up this high. Unless there was a citywide situation that meant the Avengers needed him to help. So he was scrambling quickly to reach his spot just before the show started, when it was dark enough that few people would see him. He quickly set up his equipment, tripod, remote trigger, and got everything framed and pointed where he wanted. He was just in time. As soon as he dropped to the ground next to his tripod, the show started.

The show was beautiful, explosions of light and color making starbursts and shooting stars. He went through most of his memory cards before the finale even started. Fortunately, he knew to save at least one for the finale and had a card swapped and ready in time. He didn’t have time to do more than glance at his finder screen, making sure he was in focus and pointing the right way; he knew much of the process of photography is just the luck of pushing the trigger at the right time. Wasting time during the show to review would risk missing the perfect shot. So he just kept shooting until the show finally finished. He webbed home quickly, knowing that with the amount of people out and about he’d have to hurry and drop his equipment off somewhere safe so he could get to patrolling. At least this year, nothing had pulled him away during the show.

3 - Window

Great photos take a lot of effort and planning. But sometimes, a great photo is just luck. Just being in the right place at the right time and having the camera ready when you need it. Peter saw a lot of things that would make great photos, but by the time he got his camera out, it was too late.

But sometimes everything aligns, and it all works out.

Like today. Peter had been walking home and passed a site where they were going to demolish a building. He ducked into an alley, changed, and scrambled to the roof in time to take some amazing photos of the windows exploding outward when the demolitions charge went off. He caught the glass bending then breaking into shards, before flying away from the building. It was over in seconds, but somehow he had his lens pointing at the right spot when it went. Not a shot he’d likely ever get again.

4 - Bot

Sometimes, the projects he got asked to photograph turned out to be a lot more interesting than he expected. Today, for example, they were interviewing Tony Stark for a celebrity profile. He was there to take photos and had really been dreading it. Taking photos of celebrities was never fun. They always wanted to pose and never seemed to relax enough for him to get anything real. And he always had a low-level worry that Tony would figure out who he was, and he really didn’t need that. Especially in front of anyone else from the Bugle. All it would take was one word to his boss, and he’d be out of a job and on the front page.

But when they showed up to Stark Tower, someone leads them into a lab to find Tony on the floor surrounded by parts, repairing one of his bots. The weird thing was, Tony had everything arranged around him in an intricate pattern. It looked kind of like one of those exploded diagrams you see in user manuals. It meant they couldn’t get very close to Tony, which irked the reporter with Peter. Peter was sure they’d be told to wait until Tony had time to clean up and meet them somewhere else. But when they asked, Tony told them to go ahead. Just don’t step on any parts. 

“What about photos?” Peter asked.

Tony didn’t even look up. “Well, your boss wanted a day in the life, right? This is my day.” He shrugged. “They get a lot of the jetting around red carpet stuff already.”

Peter grinned. “Okay. Anything you don’t want in pictures?”

Tony shook his head. “Just don’t knock any pieces around. If you do, it’ll take longer to get this back together again.”

So Peter spent the rest of the interview taking amazing photos of Tony at work, surrounded by pieces of bot, replacing and checking as he rebuilt. By the time the reporter had finished all of their questions, Tony had reassembled the bot and Peter got pictures of it trundling off to do whatever it did when it didn’t need repairs.

5 - Confetti

The next time he had to photograph Tony, it was more of a red carpet situation. Peter really hated those, because he had to dress in a tux for the evening so he didn’t look out-of-place wandering around the launch party Tony was having for his latest piece of Tech. Jameson told him not to photograph the tech—he said they had enough photos of that. He wanted glitz and glamor and pizazz. So Peter wandered around, snapping shots of beautiful socialites, important people, and celebrities. Just the kind of job he hated. Uncomfortable clothes, too much noise, and nothing worth shooting.

Then, Jarvis’ voice came over the speakers and asked everyone to stand aside. Then an AC/DC song boomed out of the speakers, the bass pounding so loud Peter’s bones were aching. And Tony arrived. He walked down the central aisle of the room, which was suddenly clear, flanked by two rows of jogging men and women dressed in iron man’s colors, holding what looked like Nerf guns. The lines stopped when they reached the front of the room, and turned, facing the crowds. Tony kept walking, waving and grinning as he went. As he stepped up onto the podium, the lines brought the guns to their shoulders, aiming at the ceiling, and fired. At first Peter thought they had shot Nerf pellets, but when the shapes approached the ceiling, they exploded into confetti, falling over the crowd and coating everyone in red and gold. 

Peter just grinned and snapped away. Finally. Something worth photographing. While a lot of the people were making faces at the confetti now in their hair, their drinks, all down their fronts, there were also many people who were actually smiling. Not the fake “someone’s pointing a camera at me smiles,” but “that’s amazing and I love it” smiles. Tony knew how to make an entrance.

+1 - Explosions

Peter has an enormous collection of photos he doesn’t sell. Some he deletes immediately. There’s no point in keeping blurry, out-of-focus shots. Some he keeps as reminders. Sometimes he just browses through his collection, remembering.

He’d accidentally let MJ see his collection. And she’d nagged him, and nagged him, and finally taken a copy of his library. Then told him to show up in a nice suit at a gallery tonight at 7:00 for an art show, telling him a few of his photos were going to be in the show. He wanted to refuse, but Aunt May was also going to be there, so he sighed and dressed as ordered before showing up at the gallery.

He stopped in surprise, staring at the front door. The sign announced a showing of Explosions! A photo event by Peter Parker. 

Frowning, he walked into the gallery and stared. The room was empty, but the walls were covered with his photographs. He walked along the walls. The color run. Fireworks. Stark. He shook his head. 

“Amazing, isn’t it?” MJ asked, walking up on side of him. 

He looked at her, “But they’re just photos.”

MJ sighed heavily. “I knew you didn’t understand how great they were. May and I went through them and picked out the best. It was May’s idea to call the show Explosions. It ties everything together.”

Peter frowned. “I hadn’t realized I even had this many photos. But I don’t think anyone is going to want to see them. They like the ones I get in the paper. This…” He waved a hand at the walls. “This is just for me. I like the patterns and the colors.”

MJ snorted. “You’re not the only one. You think the gallery would have agreed to host this if the photos were trash? They’d love to carry your stuff in the future. And it might even pay more than that rag you work for does.”

The rest of the evening passed in a blur. May or MJ took turns staying with him, knowing if one of them didn’t he’d leave before the end. People kept coming up to talk to him, telling him how wonderful his photos were. But finally it was over and they were ready to head out. 

“So. What are your plans next?” MJ asked him and they left the gallery. 

Peter shrugged. “Same as before. I’ll keep taking photos and living my life.”


	3. Delirium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Peter. He had a break last chapter, but this chapter doesn't treat him too well. Sorry...

It’s well known that Peter Parker is severely sleep deprived. He knows, alright? It’s just that between his time working at the Bugle, attending classes, and protecting the city, he doesn’t have a lot of time for things like sleep. Throw in visits to Aunt May, time with his boyfriend (thank goodness Deadpool enjoys patrolling with him or he’d never get to see Wade), and he ends up replacing sleep with caffeine more and more often. 

Most of the time he gets by. But tonight, tonight was another matter. Wade was visiting with Weasel (something about getting more info on a mob boss Wade was after for Shield). And Peter had spent the week cramming for an exam he’d taken earlier that day (he was pretty sure he’d gotten a decent grade on it). And now, without the adrenaline from worrying about the exam, and with his morning (and afternoon) coffee wearing off, he was moving a lot slower than usual. 

Of course, that’s the night Rhino decided to go rampaging around. Peter had managed to wrap him up, eventually. But not before Rhino had slammed him repeatedly into walls and the ground. He was pretty sure his wrist was broken, his ribs were aching, and he was having trouble seeing. He webbed himself up to the roof, so he could watch until the police arrived to take Rhino in. He collapsed against the ledge around the edge of the roof, lying his head down on his arm and watching. He’d get up as soon as the cops left with Rhino and swing back home. He’d take the rest of the night off and get some sleep. 

The police, who had been just waiting for Peter to get Rhino trussed up, were dismantling Rhino’s armor and had him in a reinforced truck and headed off quickly. Peter tried to push himself to his feet, but everything tilted crazily and he collapsed back down.

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, but winced at the pain that flared when his ribs moved. Groaning, he pawed at his suit and dragged his phone out. He couldn’t focus, but somehow held down the home button until the Google voice asked how it could help.

“Call Pool.” He croaked, hoping it would understand. He heard Wade’s phone ringing, then his voice.

“Baby boy. What’s up?” Wade asked.

“Need help.” He gritted out. “Can’t swing.” Everything was getting swimmy now. 

“Okay. Where are you?” Wade said. 

But Peter didn’t answer. He couldn’t seem to move or talk, just lay there staring at the roof.

*****

It took Wade longer than he wanted to admit finding Peter. White was muttering about how he should have listened and put a tracker on Peter when Yellow yelled and got him to look in the display window of a store he was passing, and see images of Spiderman battling Rhino. The ticker along the bottom said the image was from earlier that night. He could identify one building in the background, so that gave him a place to start. 

Then it was climbing up roof after roof until he located Peter slumped in a heap near the edge of one. 

“Baby boy. How are you doing?” Wade asked, dropping to his knees next to Peter.

“I’m fine. I’ll get up in a moment.” Peter said. “Got a class at 8, just going to sleep a little more.”

“Funny.” Wade grinned. “How about we get you home and you sleep in a bed instead of up here?” He leaned forward and tried to slide his arms under Peter.

“No.” Peter groaned and smacked Wade’s hands away. Hard. Almost enough to break bones. “Aunt May, I promise I’ll be up in a few minutes. Just let me wake up.”

Wade froze and looked the young man over carefully. “Okay, Peter, but I really think you need to get back home.”

Peter whined and slapped at Wade again. “Later.”

“Okay…” Wade drawled. “I’ll wait.” He sat back on his heels, confused. Then pulled his phone out and quickly dialed. 

“Hello?” Bruce’s voice answered.

“Dr Green!” Wade said. “Got a question for you. I’m here with Spiderman and he seems to have a wee bit of a confusion problem.”

“Wade.” Bruce answered, already exasperated. Not bad. Less than two minutes and he’d already gotten to him. “What is going on.”

“Spidey was fighting Rhino earlier, then he called me and said he needed help. But he stopped talking. I found him up on a roof here, but he seems to think I’m Aunt May and that he’s in bed. Can I move him? What do I do?” Wade didn’t have to work too hard to push down the urge to tweak Banner more.

“Probably a head injury. Can he move his toes and fingers?” Bruce’s voice was now serious.

Wade nodded. “Yep. Hit me hard when I tried to pick him up. Says he wants to sleep a little longer.”

“Okay… Well, I can send Tony over to pick him up.” Bruce said.

“Yeah, no go on that. You know how he is about being seen out of his suit. I’m gonna take him home.”

“Let me know if he gets worse.” Bruce said. “I can come to you if need be.”

Wade grunted back and hung up. He sat back, watching Peter. He was making Wade very nervous. He was too quiet and too still. Peter was normally always moving; even when he was studying, he tapped his foot or clicked his pen. Now he was just lying there, staring. 

“Hey, Baby Boy, I’m going to take you home.” He slowly leaned forward, but Peter just ignored him. Cautiously, Wade slid his arms under Peter and picked him up. Peter barely moved, just curled tighter into a ball.

The trip home was awful. Peter didn’t move, only whimpering occasionally if Wade jarred him too heavily. But they finally made it. 

Wade checked him over, cleaned him up, and tucked him into bed. Looked like he had a broken wrist, and some rib damage. But he was more worried about the way Peter was still just staring off into the distance. He sighed, and pulled out his phone again.

“Wade?” Banner answered on the first ring. “How is he?”

“He looks okay, possible concussion, broken wrist, some rib damage. But he’s just lying there, staring off into the distance. And what was with the thinking I’m Aunt May?” Wade demanded.

Bruce sighed. “Probably some mild delirium. Sometimes happens with head injuries, especially if the person is also exhausted, or dehydrated, or…” 

Wade groaned. “He was cramming all week for an exam, so I know he didn’t get much sleep. And he’s always forgetting to eat and drink enough.”

Bruce hummed. “That might do it. Add in a head injury…” His voice trailed off.

“Wait,” Wade interrupted. “I thought people with delirium bounced around and were all fighty.”

“It depends on the person. And if part of the reason he’s delirious is that he’s exhausted, it could make him hypoactive, quiet and not moving at all. Since he might have a concussion, you should check on him every few hours. With his healing, he should be fine in a day or two. You should probably have him call in sick tomorrow.”

Wade snorted. “I may have to call in sick for him. He won’t.”

Bruce laughed. “Okay. Well, whatever it takes. In the meantime, call me if anything changes for the worse, or if he’s still acting odd in the morning.”

“Will do.” Wade hung up, then collapsed onto the couch, setting a timer for two hours later.


	4. Human Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q needs to learn not to show Bond movies.

Q squinted at the map trying to follow the dot, then pulled his glasses off and glared at the lenses before polishing them angrily. The problem wasn’t his glasses, he knew, but he couldn’t really do anything about the exhaustion. Five agents in the field with critical missions, and constant questions and prods from upstairs didn’t leave a lot of time for sleep. He needed to get 004 back to a safe location, then he could turn over everything to R and take a nap. Just a little longer…

A low thud startled him, and he jerked his head up and looked around the room quickly. The room was mostly empty. Never empty, because even when things were slow someone needed to monitor the systems. And someone was always in the field and might need support. But at 2 a.m. there were only about 5 of his staff on site. He noticed that R was also looking around. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised a hand before turning back to the monitors on her desk. Q could see she was flipping through the CCTV in the building. He turned back to his task.

“Almost there, 004. Last building on your right. They’re expecting you.”

004 answered quickly, but Q could tell she was exhausted. “I’d expect nothing less with you on deck.” 

Q watched as the dot approached the door, then disappeared within.

“Q, I’m inside and they’re taking over. See you back at headquarters.” 004 said. “Thanks for getting me out of that.”

Q smiled. “Safe trip, 004.”

He dropped his headset and hung his head for a moment. Then stood up and stretched. He heard his back crack noisily and groaned. Bond was always telling him he needed to get up and walk, but he got too focussed on work to remember. Until he stood up at the end and realized he’d been sitting hunched over for hours.

R smiled at him. “Ready to head out?” 

Q nodded. “004’s safe and on her way home, and it should be quiet for a while.”

“And if it’s not, we can reach you quickly. Bond’s down in the gym, said he’d wait to drive you home.”

Normally, Q would be irritated at how Bond was always babying him. But tonight he was too exhausted. Just the thought of either taking the subway or trying to find a cab was too much. He could tolerate Bond lecturing him on the way home if it meant getting there quicker.

“What was that noise earlier?” He asked. “Sounded a bit like an explosion.”

R shook her head. “I went through all the CCTV, didn’t see anything. Maybe something on the road?”

Q frowned. “We’re under the river here. If we heard it from the road down here it had to be huge. Show me?” He leaned over the edge of her desk.

R turned back to her computer and flipped through the different cameras. Q’s eyes focused on them, feeling more alert now. Something felt a bit off. He’d done a lot of work with munitions, and that had sounded like an explosion. 

“Wait. Stop.” He pointed at the monitor.

R paused, then scrolled back a few cameras until she saw it too.

“Time’s off.” She said.

Q nodded. “Call Bond. Anyone else in the building?”

R shook her head, already dialing. “No, morning shift won’t start arriving for several hours.”

“Okay. Get Bond. I’ll call security.” He darted back to his desk and grabbed the handset, which had a direct connection to the security desk. He was tapping his fingers impatiently waiting for a response when the door slammed open and three armed men darted in. 

“Hands up.” The lead man ordered. Q dropped the handset, leaving the line open to security. He slowly raised his hands. Q glanced around, R was also standing, hands raised. She did, he noticed, still have her headset on. He tilted his head and nodded at her ear. She nodded firmly and glanced at the men.

“Everyone, into there.” The rest of his staff rose and shuffled their way into the office. Q stayed back, wanting to make sure everyone else got in safely. R walked by him, on the side away from the intruders, and he felt her slip something into his pocket. He glanced at her, but she was walking into the office with her hands in the air.

Q stepped forward, following his team.

“Not you.” The man in the lead barked. “You get back to your computer.”

Q paused, then turned to look. “Me? I’m not going to be much help. I’m just the night shift. They put all us newbies here.” He knew he looked too young to be Quartermaster. Might as well take advantage of that.

The man snorted. “Right. We know who you are. Get over to your machine.” 

Q shrugged. It was worth a shot. He walked over to the machine and sat down again, sliding his hand into his pocket. _Headset. R’s headset._

He glanced around at the men. The two in the back were facing the entrance. The one who’d ordered him to get back to his computer was barricading the door to the office. He quickly pulled the headset out of his pocket and slipped it in his ear. 

“So what do you want me doing?” Q asked.

“Q?” Bond’s voice sounded in his ear. “I’ve called for reinforcements. Security staff here is all down. Hold out as long as you can.”

Q cleared his throat, but didn’t dare answer.

The closer man approached his desk. “We need you to locate someone for us.” 

Q frowned. Not what he had expected. “Locate someone. We don’t go in for that much here.”

A sudden clatter of metal on concrete had both of them looking at the door. One of the men at the door had collapsed, dropping his gun.

“What the…” The man behind him grabbed the back of his chair, and he felt a gun pressed against his neck. “Don’t you move. You.” He raised his voice and yelled at the other. “Where’d that come from?”

The other man crouched, peering through the doorway. A _put_ and he collapsed. 

“Dammit.” Q felt a firm grip in his hair yanking him up. “Stand up.”

Q held his hands up and rose to be yanked against the man behind him. “Okay, okay, standing.”

“Shut up. Who’s here. No one is supposed to be here except a bunch of boffins.”

Q sighed. “You do realize where you are, right? It’s not like the actual _spies_ who work here would announce themselves. It drives security crazy.”

“No. We planned this carefully. No one is here. All of them are out of country.”

Q frowned. How had they known? Another mole? Everyone should have been out of country. Except 007, who for the first time in history finished a mission early and with no issues, and come straight back. 

“Q.” Bond’s voice was low. 

“Who is that?” Q’s head was jerked back. “Get that out of your ear.”

Q raised his hand slowly and pulled off the headset.

“On the floor. Step on it.”

Q dropped the headset and ground it underfoot.

“Where are you?” The man called. “You want your quartermaster here, you better get in here.”

Bond strode through the door, leading with his gun. “Well,” He drawled. “We are rather fond of him, so I’d be so pleased if you didn’t put too many dents in him.”

“Get in here, away from the door.”

Bond just looked at the man, not moving.

“Get your arse moving. Get away from the door and put our guy on the floor.”

Bond frowned. “And why would I do that?”

“If you don’t, I’m going to put a bullet through his head.” The man was getting a little frantic Q notes.

Bond lowered his gun and strode further into the room and to one side of the door. Then he leaned forward, snapped his gun up, and shot Q. 

“What the fuck!” Q yelled, collapsing on the ground.

Bond immediately snapped the gun up further and shot the man. Not that Q really cared. He had a bullet. In his leg. From one of the _good_ guys.

The room filled up with people, and Q eventually found himself in medical. Not that he’d wondered, but having a bullet _removed_ was even worse than getting shot. But finally, they bandaged him up and gave him something for the pain, and he was told he could sleep.

Before he could, though, Bond walked in and asked how he was doing. _He didn’t even apologize._ He acted like shooting a coworker in the leg was a normal behavior.

“What the fuck!” Q yelled.

“You already said that.” Bond observed, sitting in the only chair in the room.

“You shot me. Why did you think that was a good idea?”

Bond frowned. “You’re the one who made me watch _Speed.”_


	5. GunPoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spiderman rarely finds himself at gunpoint. Spiderman usually comes up behind guys with guns and webs the weapons away before they can be pointed at him. 
> 
> Peter Parker doesn't get guns pointed at him. People curse at him, flip him off, and (Jameson, cough) drench him in spittle while yelling. But guns? Those don’t happen to Peter.
> 
> Ugh. Forgot to post this yesterday--accidentally clicked Draft.

Spiderman rarely finds himself at gunpoint. Spiderman usually comes up behind guys with guns and webs the weapons away before they can be pointed at him. 

Peter Parker doesn’t get guns pointed at him. People curse at him, flip him off, and (Jameson, cough) drench him in spittle while yelling. But guns? Those don’t happen to Peter. Which is good, he realizes, because having a gun pointed at him would put him in a really awkward position. He could do something, but it means revealing Spiderman’s identity. And that would mean that Aunt May may find herself with a gun pointed at her. 

So here he is, in a bank, with a gun pressed up against his head. He had left Wade at Starbucks to pick up some coffees and had run in to pick up some forms for Aunt May. He thought it would be a quick trip—there wasn’t anyone in line ahead of him and two tellers working. He figured he’d be done before Wade was out with their drinks.

Then his spider sense went off hard and five masked men walked in, one locking the door behind him, and ordered everyone down on the floor. While Peter doesn’t get guns pointed at him that often, _Spiderman_ sees an awful lot of guns. Apparently that made Peter a little less impressed with guns than he should have been, and he didn’t move fast enough to make the crooks happy.

One man growled and kicked Peter’s knee, then slammed the barrel of his gun against his temple, knocking Peter to his knees. Peter grimaced at the pain, but didn’t dare move; the man had the barrel pressed firmly against his ear. What should he do? He tried looking around the room without moving his head. It looked like everyone else was on the floor.

He breathed in slowly, and decided the best thing to do was to wait until they left, then go after them. Unless anyone else in here was in danger, he’d just keep pretending to be normal Peter Parker and do what he was told.

The man holding the gun to his head appeared to be in charge—even with the gun pressed against Peter’s head, his attention was on the other men who had managed to get behind the counter where the tellers were, and were emptying all the drawers. Peter knew from experience that since it was Friday afternoon, the bank had more cash on hand than usual, expecting a lot of visitors cashing checks. But still. How much money could they possibly expect to get? Seemed like there were a lot better ways to get money with less risk of ending up dead or in jail.

The men had already worked their way through the drawers and filed out from behind the teller window. The man holding the gun against his head grunted. “You’re going to lie down, and we’re going to walk…”

He was cut off by the sound of sirens. Peter groaned internally. No way the guy was going to leave him here now.

“Fuck.” The guy shoved the gun harder against Peter’s head. Peter grimaced. Wade had once told him it only took five pounds of pressure to pull a trigger. He hoped the guy didn’t jerk his finger when using the gun as a prod. “Get up. You’re walking me to the door so we can see what’s going on.”

“No need.” One of the others said. “There’s two cop cars right outside the bank. Someone must have set off an alarm.”

“Up.” The man slammed Peter again with the gun. Peter climbed carefully to his feet. “Over to the counter.” 

Peter walked slowly to the counter and stopped, hands partially raised.

“Is there a back way out?” The man barked at the teller on the floor behind the counter. 

The teller lifted her head and shook it nervously, clearly terrified.

“How do you get in?” The man demanded.

“W-we.” The woman cleared her throat. “We come in through the front door.”

The man growled. 

“Mac. More cops are arriving.” One of the other men was standing on side of the window, peering out around the edge.

“I should shoot you both.” The man snarled at the teller. “If I find out whichever of you set of the alarm, you’ll be dead.” The woman collapsed to the ground in terror, whimpering.

Peter cleared his throat. “If the cops hear gunshots, they won’t wait.”

The man snapped his gaze back to Peter. “What do you know about it?”

Peter shrugged carefully, making sure his shoulder didn’t hit the man’s arm. “I live in Queens. Armed robberies aren’t that rare. As long as they think the hostages are safe, they’re going to stay back. If they think you’re killing the hostages, they’ll think it’s worth the risk to come in shooting.”

“The hostages, hunh.” The man prodded Peter’s cheekbone with the gun. “And what, exactly, are you?”

Peter winced. “I’m one of the hostages” he answered flatly.

“That’s right. So you just keep your mouth shut.”

Peter nodded, but didn’t dare say anything else. All he needed was to set the guy off.

A sound came from the ceiling. Peter casually glanced up; it was quiet enough that no one without enhanced hearing would have heard it, and he didn’t want to draw anyone’s attention.

“Baby boy. I’m pretty sure you can hear me. Get everyone on the floor. I’m coming in on the count of five.” Wade’s voice, barely a whisper, came from above the raised ceiling. He must be in the ceiling.

“Do you want me on the floor?” Peter asked.

“I said shut up. And I want you right where you’re standing. Got it.” The man slammed the barrel into his cheekbone again. Peter was sure he was going to have a spectacular bruise.

“Okay. Got it. You’re still standing, everyone else down?” Wade asked.

“Yes.” Peter said, hoping the man thought he was replying to him.

“Starting count now.” Wade said.

Peter tried not to stiffen in anticipation, counting in his head slowly. He reached four when a panel burst out of the ceiling and Deadpool dropped to the floor with a thud, guns in both hands. He was firing before he hit, and three men went down before Peter heard the sound of Wade’s boots hitting the floor. 

The man holding Peter spun him around between the man and the noise, just in time for Peter to see Wade slam the hilt of one gun against the head of the last guy, knocking him out. He scooped up all remaining guns and somehow vanished them into his pockets. 

“Well.” He said, approaching the last man, holding his guns down casually at his sides. “What are you going to do now?”

“Stop. You get any closer and I’ll shoot this kid.” The man’s voice was a little shaky.

“And then I shoot you.” Wade replies. “And I won’t shoot to incapacitate, I’ll shoot to kill.”

“You already killed my team.” The guy snapped. 

Wade snorted. “I didn’t. They’re not dead. You put the gun down and go sit down by the rest of your team, and we let the cops take you. You move to put one more mark on that kid or anyone else in this room, and I’ll put a bullet through your eye before you can breathe out.” 

Peter felt the gun fall away from his ear, and the man stepped back away from him.

“Good. Now put the gun down on the floor.” Wade ordered.

Peter saw the man’s arm out of the corner of his eye, as he placed the gun down on the floor. Peter didn’t dare move, in case he set either of them off.

“Now over against the wall there.” Wade said. 

The man walked over near the other men crumpled and moaning against the wall and sat with his back against the wall.

“Okay. I’m going to go open the door and let the cops in.” Wade said. “Everyone else stay down, just in case they’re a little too excited out there. That includes you cutie.” He waved Peter down. 

Peter nodded and lay down on the floor next to the counter.

The next half hour was a rush of people, questions, and lights. But finally, Peter was allowed to leave. Deadpool, surprisingly enough, was also sent home. Apparently since he had rescued the hostages, saved the money, and most importantly, hadn’t killed anyone, they had nothing to hold him on. Or at least nothing they were willing to hold him on. Peter assumed most of Deadpool’s weapons weren’t exactly legal in any state outside of Utah.

They never did get their coffee.


	6. Dragged Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q is not a workaholic. He’s just the best on his team at what he does; that’s why he’s the Quartermaster. And that means, when he has multiple agents in the field, he might not eat as healthily, or sleep as often as the nosy doctors up in Medical think he should.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this may not seem like a whump to those of you reading, but let me tell you...obsessive behavior runs in my family. And for me, it takes the form of being a workaholic. (I have sooooooo many job reviews that say "needs to learn to delegate"....) At any rate, having what is done to Q done to me would be extremely painful and make me miserable. So I insist this is, in fact, a whump.

Q is not a workaholic. He’s just the best on his team at what he does; that’s why he’s the Quartermaster. And that means, when he has multiple agents in the field, he might not eat as healthily, or sleep as often as the nosy doctors up in Medical think he should. 

His minions do their best to help out; someone is always on Q monitoring duty and responsible for making sure he’s fed on time and supplied with tea anytime his mug goes empty. R takes over any duties she can to free him up to stay on the comms as much as possible. And somehow, they always make it to a point where Q is willing to turn over comms to R and go home and sleep, or collapse on the couch in his office if he doesn’t have the energy to make it home.

But after MI6 is hacked, Q gets even worse. He doesn’t trust anyone else to monitor even the simplest jobs, and he has to personally review every line of code. M doesn’t object, saying that they can’t afford another hack. But R has been watching Q and getting more and more concerned. He has dark circles under his eyes, and is starting to look emaciated, rather than just thin. When she asks, he insists he’s been sleeping every night, but she’s not sure she believes him. He’s there when she arrives, no matter what time that is, and he’s there after she leaves. She can’t bring herself to call in medical , though, because she doesn’t want to embarrass him. She just wants him to sleep. So she does the only thing she can do, she calls in reinforcements. 

She starts with Eve, who she knows is a good friend of the boffin. R heads up to Eve’s desk in the afternoon, when she knows the woman usually has a slow period while most of management is busy with lunch meetings. 

“Ms. Moneypenny,” R says, approaching the woman’s desk. “Do you have a few minutes? I have some concerns about Q.”

Eve smiles. “Hello R. I’m sorry, but M and Tanner are both in with the Prime Minister, I could get you in after that?”

“Oh, no!” R’s hands go up nervously. “I wanted to talk to you, not to them. I wanted Q’s friend, not his boss.”

Eve looks intrigued. “Oh. In that case, how can I help?”

“Have you seen Q lately?” R asks, not sure the best way to address the issue.

Eve shakes her head and frowns. “Now that I think about it, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve done more than talk to him on the phone. Why? Is something wrong?”

R sighs. “You know how Q is about the agents, right?”

Eve nods. “He thinks he’s the only one who can get them back home safe.”

R nods back. “And he is good. But now he won’t let anyone else handle anyone in the field. And since that whole mess with C, he’s reviewing every line of code that our department writes before it gets implemented.”

Eve tilts her head. “And this is a problem?”

R takes a deep breath. “I don’t think anyone outside of the department knows just how much code our teams put out. Just monitoring all the agents on the comms would be an 80 hour job. Add on to that a job that should be handled by four or five full time people, and…” She shrugged. “I’m afraid he’s going to kill himself.”

Eve frowned. “I hadn’t realized it was so bad. M didn’t seem too worried.”

R looks down at the floor, then back up at Eve. “Look. I can take care of the food and drink problem, I’ve got people assigned to be responsible for feeding him and making sure he has tea. I can’t get him to even take a nap. Just… Come by and see him. If you think he looks okay, I’ll drop it. But I don’t think he is and I need someone to help me get him to let up and let other people help. He’s right, he is the best in our department, but that just means he should be working on the important stuff. Someone lower down should be working on the less critical stuff.”

Eve nodded slowly. “Okay.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “I have a break right now. And I happened to stop at a bakery today for M. Have a few cupcakes left. I’ll wander down and give him one and see how he’s doing.”

R smiled weakly. “Thank you. I’ll stand by what you think for now, but…” She raised one hand and left the office.

*****

Eve dug through her drawer and pulled out a plastic clamshell with a cupcake and headed down a few minutes after R, making sure it didn’t look like her arrival had anything to do with R.

She found Q standing at his desk, reading through lines of code.

“Q! I just realized how long it’s been since I’ve been down to say hello, so I brought you a cupcake to make up for it.” Eve said brightly, walking up.

Q turned and smiled at her. Eve had to fight to keep her smile on her face when she saw just how bad Q looked. 

She held out the cupcake. “How’s it going down here? We’ve been running from emergency to crisis to disaster upstairs.”

Q nodded and took the cupcake. Eve noted that his hands were shaking slightly as he took it. “Same here Moneypants. Can’t wait until we catch up and everything is calmer.”

Eve smiled at him. “Well, I just had a few minutes between meetings. I have to rush back, but I wanted you to know I have forgotten about you and to give you a treat.”

Q smiled back.’Thank you. You always get the best treats.”

Eve waved at him and strode out of Q Branch and back to her desk.

She tapped her nails thinking. Something had to be done about Q, but she knew it wouldn’t be easy. Then she realized what needed to be done, and picked up the phone.

R answered immediately. “Hello?”

“R, it’s Eve. You’re right. I’m going to call in reinforcements. Sit tight, and be ready with back up coverage.”

*****

R wasn’t sure what Eve had planned, but she already had a plan drafted to delegate all except the highest importance jobs (mainly the 00s) to other proven team members, and had a change review team planned. They’d bring the reviewed changes to Q for final approval, but he wouldn’t have to read every line, just the summaries and reports from the review board. She’d brought the whole plan to Q, but he was convinced they needed to wait. R was afraid that what they’d be waiting for was for Q’s collapse. But, while she waited for Eve to take action, she reviewed everything, making a few changes in assignments as she reviewed who worked best with which agent. 

She had just put the last few changes into her spreadsheet when the door to Q branch swung open and 006 and 007 walked in. R’s eyebrows went up, surprised. If this was what Eve had planned, it might even work. Q had a hard time refusing either 006 _or_ 007\. Both of them ganging up on him, the poor boffin didn’t stand a chance.

“Well, well.” 007 drawled, walking over to Q. “Miss Moneypenny said you weren’t looking too good. I apologize for being out of country so much I didn’t notice.”

“Q. You look like death warmed over.” 006 said, leaning over Q’s desk and staring the man in the eyes.

“006, 007, if you need anything, R can help you. I’m right in the middle of something.” Q said in what R referred to as his “officious prat” voice.

“I don’t think R can help with this.” 007 replied. He looked over Q’s shoulder to see what he was working on. “Reviewing code I see.”

“We need to have all code reviewed before it goes in.” Q said firmly.

006 nodded. “Yes. I’m sure you do.”

“R,” 007 turned and faced R. “Do you have plans for managing code review?”

R nodded. “Yes 007. I’ve suggested a separation between writing, reviewing and implementing the code. That way at least three people are involved in all code changes.”

007 turned to 006. “Sounds reasonable to me, how about you.”

006 nodded. “Makes sense. Not likely to have three different moles.”

R spoke up. “In addition, I suggest that all changes have to be approved by Q. But he’ll be able to work from the review from one person, and know that another person wrote the code and a third person will implement it. That means he won’t have to review every single line himself.”

The two double 0s nodded, then turned back to Q.

“Q?” 006 asked. “What do you think about that?’

“It’s industry best practices.” Q said. “But we’re in clean up mode right now, we don’t have time…”

007 cut him off. “It looks to me like you’re the one doing all those jobs right now.”

Q sighed heavily. “I’m the best and the last hack was my fault.”

006 frowned at him. “And how much good are you going to do if you collapse on your feet right here?”

“I’m fine.” Q snapped.

007 hummed, then shoved at Q’s shoulder. Q staggered, and nearly fell, grabbing his desk to keep on his feet. “You don’t look ‘fine.’”

Q glared at him. “I’m fine when people aren’t shoving me.”

006 laughed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to put R’s plan into place. You will have final approval on all changes, and you will be in charge of all critical missions.”

“He’ll be in charge of all double-0 missions.” R piped up.

006 nodded. “You’ll be in charge of all double-0 missions. And you will be better about your health, starting right now.”

Q snorted. “This is my department. You are not my superiors, and you cannot make that happen.”

007 smiled. “Are you sure about that?” And he scooped Q up, throwing him over his shoulder, and marched out.

006 turned to R. “We have approval from both M and Tanner, and if need be they will send medical down to …”

R shook her head rapidly. “No need sir. You won’t get any objections from anyone in this department. We know he’s working himself to death.”

006 glanced around to see most of the minions watching and nodding. “Okay. Are you ready to put your plan into action?”

R nodded. “We’ll get it going right now sir. But…”

006 frowned. “What?”

R grinned. “You might want to stop by medical and get a tranquilizer. You may get him out of here, but getting him to sleep is a whole different problem.”

006 grinned. “You have a point, we’ll keep it in mind.” 


	7. Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone's out to get Peter (really, Peter again? Isn't it time I hurt someone else?).

Peter blinked his eyes open, then immediately closed them. The blinding white light shot daggers of pain through his head. He started to curl up in pain, but froze when the rest of his body joined in the screaming pain. Eyes clenched closed, and breathing shallowly, he panted slowly and mentally went through all the aches. Ankle, possible crack, more likely sprained. Ribs, definitely bruised badly. Arms relatively okay. Head, sore, but not like he’d been hit, more like he’d been drugged. 

He cracked his eyes open and looked around. He was in a brightly lit, stark white room, almost completely empty, with padded walls and floor. A toilet was in one corner, but nothing else.

He glanced down, still in his suit. Reached up and touched his face. Mask still on. What was going on? He’d expected the first thing someone who captured him would do would be to pull the mask off. But this wasn’t his first kidnapping, and somehow they never thought to yank the mask off.

He grunted and levered himself up to a sitting position, hands holding his head as the movement made it throb even harder. Well, someone would be around soon to monologue at him and tell him why he was here. He scooted back against the wall so he lean his head against the padding and waited.

But no one showed.

Time dragged. And _dragged_.

It was impossible to tell how much. There were no windows, no sounds, no changes in any way to tell what time it was.

Once a day (he thought) a tray (white) of food (also bland and mostly white) was shoved through a small door in his cell. But the door was connected to another door, and he couldn’t see anything outside.

By the third day he knew exactly how big the room was (three strides long, four strides wide.) He had examined every wall, and had even climbed up and explored the ceiling. Nothing. No way out, no sound. He was exhausted. The light made it really tough to sleep, and the complete silence was really getting on his nerves. His spider sense kept going off randomly, even though there was never anything around. And he’d started hearing things. A low pitched humming sometimes, sometimes people’s voices. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, and he wasn’t sure if they were even there or not. 

He kept running over everything he could remember, but it wasn’t much.

The last thing he remembered was walking out of class on Wednesday afternoon. He suspected something happened after that and his memory was missing a chunk. But what?

He’d heard that the Green Goblin had been sighted again, but he knew that wasn’t possible. He’d gone to visit Harry only a week ago. He was still in the hospital, in a catatonic state. Dr. Hamilton said he showed some improvement, and that there was hope, but that it was going to take time. So it wasn’t the Green Goblin. It had to be someone else who’d grabbed him. Possibly Hydra? But if so, why hadn’t they said anything. Maybe they were just holding him for ransom? If so, they were in for a surprise. The Avengers wouldn’t pay, and Aunt May had no money.

He sighed and collapsed back against the wall, and closed his eyes. About the only thing that seemed to help was visualizing swinging around New York. If he visualized his favorite routes, he actually felt not too bad when he opened his eyes. 

*****

Wade noticed Spiderman was gone Wednesday night, since most nights they patrolled together. But he assumed Spiderman had something he had to work on. By Friday, though, he knew something was wrong. After all, not only was Spidey skipping out on patrols with Wade, Spidey wasn’t patrolling at all. Spidey had told Wade he felt an obligation to patrol, because none of the other superheroes really looked out for the little people. But Wade thought it was more like an addiction for Spiderman; he patrolled tired, sick, even with broken bones. Wade couldn’t think of anything bad enough to make the hero miss three nights in a row. So he started asking around. His contacts didn’t know anything (or wouldn’t tell Wade—they really didn’t like Spiderman much.) Daredevil hadn’t seen Spiderman in months; he rarely left his borough and only ran into Spiderman when there were city wide issues.

He tried the Avengers, but Start just said “Great. The kid’s finally showing some sense and decided to stay away from you.” He tried to argue with Iron Douche, and ended up thrown out of the tower. Clint did find him later, and said that he hadn’t seen Spiderman lately, but he’d see what he could find and update Wade. So at least one of the Avengers wasn’t a total moron.

He headed home and slogged his way up to his apartment, trying to think what to try next.

<what good are you as a merc?>

[yeah. Can’t even find our baby boy when he’s missing.]

<might as well just off yourself. Not like you’re doing anyone any good.>

“Shut up.” Wade muttered, not really even listening to them. “Problem is, I can’t easily figure out where he is without knowing who he is.”

[but you do know who he is.]

“Yeah, but it was an accident. And he wouldn’t like it.” Wade replied.

<what if it means getting to him before he’s dead?>

Wade frowned. New York was definitely better with Spiderman in it. Was it worth it to save the hero if it meant he was so angry he never talked to Wade again? He sighed. There really wasn’t any question, he’d save the kid even if it meant he never got to talk to him again.

He clapped his hands together, and grabbed his laptop, ready to track down everything Spiderman (Peter) had done Wednesday before he vanished.

****

Peter was going crazy. He felt like bugs were crawling all over him; he wasn’t sure if it was from just being in the suit for so long or if he was just losing it. And now he was going blind. He’d fallen asleep for a few minutes, and when he woke up it was pitch black in the room. At least before he could look at his legs and see something; now there was nothing. No sound, no smell, and now no sight. He was trying really hard to keep calm, but it was really hard to breathe. He backed up to the wall, then slid over to the corner, so at least he could feel the walls around him. He closed his eyes and starting thinking about swinging again. The blackness wasn’t so bad when his eyes were closed. And if he thought about it hard enough, he could almost feel the webs in his hand and the air rushing past as he swung. His breath slowed down and he started feeling a little calmer. He kept his eyes closed. Then he smiled. He could hear Deadpool. The merc could be a real pain, but patrols were a lot more interesting with him along. He liked to talk even more than Peter did, and that was saying a lot. 

Peter frowned. But Wade was usually funny or disgusting or being a smart ass. He didn’t _ever_ sound scared. And right now, that was how he sounded. Nothing scared Deadpool.

“Spidey, are you okay? Baby boy? Come on answer me.” Wade repeated.

Peter huddled further into the corner. Great. His panic attack was even spreading to his hallucinations. 

“Pool. Put the light down. If he’s been in the dark a lot, it’ll be too hard on his eyes. I can get him.”

Peter frowned. That was Daredevil. What was he doing in Peter’s hallucination? He never patrolled with Daredevil. 

“No. Guide me over there and I’ll get him. You lead us out.”

Hands touched Peter. That was new. His hallucinations up until now had just been sounds and sights. He knew they weren’t real because he couldn’t touch them. Did that mean this was real?

He snapped his eyes open, but couldn’t see anything.

“Spiderman.” Daredevil’s voice came again. “We’re here to get you out. Deadpool’s going to carry you, the power’s out so it’s dark and we can’t check you over until we get you out.”

“Daredevil?” Peter croaked. “Deadpool.”

“Yep spidey babe, we’re here. Clint came along for the ride, but he’s guarding our exit.” Deadpool’s voice was very close. Were those his hands?

He felt himself be lifted up and then they were moving. It was actually very nice. Dark, and he was warm and felt safe. And before too much longer, he passed out.

***

Peter woke up again in a bed. The room lights were on, but very low. He glanced around and realized he was in the medical wing of Avengers tower. Deadpool was sitting anxiously next to him. “Baby boy! You’re awake. How do you feel?” 

Peter grabbed his head, and realized he was still wearing his mask. “Gross. I need a thousand showers.”

Wade nodded. “Didn’t let them take your suit off. But Dr. Hulk says your malnourished, and probably are going to be suffering from PTSD like symptoms for a while. Sounds like you’ve been kept in sensory deprivation, and that means it’s going to take a while to adjust to the real world.” Peter realized Wade was whispering, not shouting, and groaned.

“With my senses, it’s hard enough to deal with things without it being amped up to a thousand.” 

“Well, we can leave you here in this room for a while, it’s what Dr. Green and Angry recommends. They can make sure you get enough to eat, and gradually increase the noise and light and so on.” Deadpool says.

“I just want to go home.” Peter groaned.

Deadpool shook his head. “Not a good idea. You don’t have anything to eat there, the walls are like paper.” Then he froze.

Peter looked at him in surprise. “How do you know what’s in my apartment.”

Deadpool dropped his head. “I’m sorry, baby boy. But you were missing and I had to find you. _AndIalreadyknewwhoyouwere_.” He rushed through the last part nervously.

“What?” Peter asked.

“I accidentally met you. You you, not Spidey you.” Wade said. 

“How did you know it was me?” Peter asked. He assumed he’d get panicked if Wade found out who he was, but right now, maybe he’d used up all his panic. He just felt tired.

Wade plucked at the blankets on Peter’s bed. “I am a merc, baby boy. It’s what I do.”

Peter nodded. “That makes sense. Are you going to tell anyone?”

Wade snapped his head up. “No way! I never would have even gone to your place if you hadn’t been missing for three days. And if you want me to never be around you again, I understand. I just couldn’t not do everything I could to find you. New York needs you.”

Peter tilted his head. “I believe you Pool. And thanks for finding me.”

“So should I go?” Wade half stood from his chair.

Peter shook his head. “No. Stay. I don’t want to stay here, but you’re right. There isn’t anything to eat at home.”

“You could stay with me.” Wade suggested. “I have an extra bedroom, and a nice shower. And I can even cook. Oh! And no one else is on my floor so we won’t hear too much noise.”

Peter grinned, even though it wouldn’t show through his mask. “Yeah, I’d like that. Lets do that. I need a long shower and some sleep. Then you can meet me properly.”

“Awesome.” Deadpool said. “Let’s do it!”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a whole back story around this. Even a villain lined up that made sense with the psychological torture going on, but just writing this part (after I wasted absolutely hours down the rabbit hole of white torture) took most of my day. Maybe I'll come back to it another time so I can use the rest of my storyline... But first I have to make it through this month.


	8. Stab Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter gets outnumbered. Luckily Wade is there to pick up the pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a sadistic DM with these prompts, cackling to myself as I roll the dice and determine who I'm going to torture today. I think next month I'l try out another list to see if I can mix it up between angst and fluff. In the meantime, today's victim is Peter Parker. That blasted Parker luck seems to make his number come up an awful lot...

Peter stared up at the stars. Or where the stars would be if it wasn’t for all the light pollution in New York. Or, actually, where the stars would be visible if it wasn’t for all the light pollution. He was sure the stars were there, he just couldn’t see them. And yes, he was rambling. But he figured he deserved a pass, considering he still had a knife buried in his shoulder. He was just trying to keep himself awake until he felt strong enough to travel home, or at least pull the knife out.

The fight could have gone a lot better. Or it could have gone a lot worse. At least Deadpool had been here to help when the fight turned out to be an ambush and five more men had burst out of what felt like nowhere to join in. 

Wade was wandering around, making sure everyone was tied up or incapacitated. Or at least that’s what Peter assumed Wade was up to. He was having trouble focusing on what the man was doing from where he (Peter) collapsed against the wall after webbing up the last bad guy.

“Ninjas, Spidey, actual ninjas!” Wade bounced over. Peter laughed to himself, picturing Wade as Tigger, bouncing around on his tail. He sounded so excited to fight ninjas. 

Peter cleared his throat and tried to say… he wasn’t sure what. But he found that even with Wade closer, he still couldn’t focus. Not good. Was he going to pass out? He didn’t have time for this. 

“Whoa, Spidey.” Wade's voice changed from his usual cheerful tone to something a lot more serious. “You have a knife in you. I don’t know if you know this, but that is not where we keep our knives.”

Peter laughed. Or tried to. It came out more like a gasp.

Wade was a lot closer now, Peter could feel his hand on his shoulder. “Okay, okay, okay… Let’s see. Bleeding, but not too bad. Position is good for having missed major arteries…” 

Peter reached up and grabbed the handle of the knife and yanked, pulling the blade out.

“No! Baby boy, never pull the knife out. It keeps the blood inside where it belongs, which is inside of you and not all over this roof.” Wade sounded exasperated.

“No ambulance.” Peter gasped. “Can’t carry me without joggling it.”

Wade tutted at him. “I know that, but you still don’t pull it out willy-nilly. It needs to come out carefully.” He was now on his knees next to Peter, doing something to his shoulder. “Okay, we need to pack this up and get you out of here. I don’t have anything for sewing on me.”

“Webs work.” Peter croaked, holding out his hand. Dully, he noted he still had the bloody knife in his hand, and stared at it. Wade took the knife and dropped it on the ground, then unfastened Peter’s web shooter. “Don’t leave the knife.” Peter whispered as Wade cut the shoulder of his suit away, then sealed up the wound quickly with the webbing. 

“Yeah, yeah, no worries baby boy.” He picked up the knife and wiped it off on his thigh, before tucking it away somewhere. “Now, any more places you’re leaking fluids?”

Peter shook his head shallowly. “No.”

“I’m surprised they even got you once.” Wade said, strapping the web shooters around his own wrists. “You usually dodge.”

“Doesn’t work so well when it’s six on two. Dodged one guy right into the path of another guy.” Peter sighed. 

“Well, let’s get you back and cleaned up and then get you fed so that wimpy healing factor of yours can get you back to swinging.” He frowned. “Normally I’d just web your arms around my neck, but I don’t think that’ll be too comfortable for you right now. But Fireman’s carry would make swinging challenging. Okay. Gonna go with arms around my neck but web your legs around my waist so most of your weight is there, and arms are just for balance. You alert enough to help me out baby boy?”

Peter nodded weakly.

“Okay, let’s get you on my back.” Wade squatted down between Peter’s legs, back to the hero, and pulled Peter’s arms up over his shoulders. 

Peter tried to keep quiet, but moaned softly as the pain spiked again in his shoulder.

“Sorry baby boy. Almost there.” Wade held on to Peter’s uninjured arm, leaving the injured one loose. “Okay, upsy-daisy Spidey.” He slowly stood up.

Peter helped as best he could to get his feet under him.

“Alrighty. Gonna fasten your arms.” Wade said as he webbed Peter’s arms together over his shoulders. “Now just the legs…” He squatted down a bit and grabbed Peter’s lower legs, bringing them around his hips. “Okay….” He webbed the legs together around his waist. “How does that feel?”

Peter groaned. “Okay. Not too bad.”

Wade nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.”

Peter didn’t remember most of the trip. He never liked when Wade swung them anywhere. He guessed it said something about how much of a control freak he was, but he preferred to be the one driving. Swinging? Whatever. It was hard to adjust to the movement when you didn’t know what was coming next. And the trip was constantly jarring his shoulder, even though Wade had webbed him up, so that there wasn’t much weight or pulling on the wound. He must have passed out at some point, because the next thing he knew he was lying on the couch in Wade’s living room while the Merc did something painful to his shoulder. He glanced down and saw a needle, so grit his teeth and tried to keep still. 

He must have passed out again, because when he opened his eyes, the room was darker and there was a plate of tacos on the table in front of him, his legs were draped across Wade’s lap, and the Merc was watching TV.

“You awake, baby boy?” Wade asked.

“Yeah.” Peter yawned. 

“Better eat something, then you can go back to sleep if you want.”

“Okay.” Peter inhaled all the tacos, feeling relieved. Hunger was a good sign that his healing factor was working. Then he fell asleep, smiling. It was likely when he woke up that Wade would have a plate of pancakes waiting for him, knowing he’d be starving.


	9. Shackled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond finds himself a bit tied up. But he rarely stays that way long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to my daughter, who tested out (at great pain to herself) whether or not someone could break free of legs duct-taped to a chair. Thank goodness our neighbors aren't close enough to see what we get up to in the evenings...

“Your other left, Bond.” Q sighed, watching as Bond ran the opposite of the direction he had just told him to go.

Bond just grunted and kept running.

Q swore under his breath, adjusted his view, and scanned the direction his agent was running, looking for the best way to get him through the several enemy combatants lining the route he had _told his agent to avoid. ****_“Bond. Two men through the next doorway.”

Bond didn’t reply, but Q switched to the camera in the next hall and saw Bond burst through the door and grab one man, pulling him in front like a shield, where he was promptly shot by the other man. Q grimaced. He _hated_ when Bond did that. He had no idea what the men had loaded in their weapons, at it was possible for the bullets to go through one body and right into the next. Bond however seemed to believe the move better than a kevlar vest. Bond continued the motion to swing up his gun and shot the other man in the head.

“If you are up for suggestions, there are fewer impediments and you’ll actually end up outside the building if you take the next door on your right, leading to the stairs.”

“When have I ever ignored your advice, Q.” Bond drawled, barely out of breath, even after running and fighting.

Q’s mouth dropped open, and his fingers stopped their frantic typing for a few seconds while he gaped at his monitor. “What? You just went the opposite bloody direction, Bond.”

Bond chuckled. “I may not always do what you tell me, Q, but I always pay attention.”

Q frowned and started typing again. He was tempted to point out that he could see the entire building, but realized it was pointless. He just had to get Bond out of the building, even if it meant going the long way. He pulled up the next camera, and suddenly everything went black. “Bond...” He asked. “What’s going on there. I’ve lost all visibility.”

“You’re not the only one. Apparently, the power’s been cut.”

“Okay. Working on it.” Q said, frantically searching through all the access points. “Looks like someone did it the low-tech way and physically cut the line. Bond, you’re on your own.”

“You got me this far, and I was close to the window. Should be out in no time.”

Q frantically continued, looking for any way to reach his agent. Someone had severed the main power line, he wasn’t sure how. He couldn’t find even a cell phone within the structure to hack. He _hated_ being blind. So many things could go wrong. And Bond was a disaster magnet. 

Bond’s voice came suddenly in Q’s ear. “Q, we may have a bit of an issue.”

“Bond. What’s happening.” Q froze, listening desperately, trying to pick up any sign of what was going on.

“Suddenly have a lot of company.” Bond replied. 

Q heard gunshots, thuds, screams, and then a crunch followed by static.

Bond’s earwig must have been destroyed, and he’d lost connection.

******

Bond came to, sitting awkwardly in a chair, hands shackled behind him, legs fastened to the chair legs. He took a few seconds to orient himself. No major injuries (though his head bloody hurt, why did they always have to hit him on the temple?) His earwig was gone, so no Q. Okay. So he was on his own. No one around at the moment. He took advantage of the lack of watchers to try rocking his chair. It didn’t move at all; must be fastened to the floor. 

He really hated this part. He really didn’t enjoy waiting. Hopefully, someone would notice he was awake before too long; at least then things wouldn’t be boring.

******

When his captors finally made an appearance, Bond was so bored he was almost looking forward to torture. Almost. Bond wasn’t actually insane. At least the bad guy du jour was ranting in an entertaining manner while threatening to cut pieces off. His conversation was... what was the word Q used... oh yes. Banal. He missed having Q in his ear. Q was always amusing, even when he was stroppy because Bond hadn’t followed his instructions. 

Time passed. Eventually the villain wandered off, hopefully to look up some jokes or interesting facts. Meanwhile, Bond figured he should probably take advantage of the break and sleep. That way when his opportunity came up, he’d be well rested and ready to take advantage of it.

******

Another day, another rant and many more threats. Bond was beginning to wonder if it was time to retire. His tolerance for bad conversation was really wearing out. Maybe it was time to get a job at the Post Office. 

He was, honestly, not even paying attention to the questions any longer. But then, something caught his attention.

An explosion. Then another one.

His interrogator angrily pushed buttons and yelled over the comms. Bond smiled at the panicked look on his face before he dashed out of the room, in such a hurry he forgot to completely close the door. There was his chance.

He strained at his wrists, fastened behind his back with what felt like handcuffs. Bit awkward in his current position. His legs, though, were attached to the chair with duct tape. He lifted one leg as high as he could, then drove the foot down and forward, snapping the tape. Easy enough after that to repeat the process and get the other leg loose.

Standing up, he bent over and slid his hands down behind himself, under his feet, and had them in front of himself.

They’d taken his shoes, and his belt, but he still had a small pick in the corner seam of his shirt. In less than a minute, he’d wrangled it out and had it in the lock. A few seconds of uncomfortable angling and he had one hand free. The second hand was a lot easier to get loose. 

He didn’t waste any time after that, and was out the door and looking for an escape route.

He nearly ran into someone rushing by; he grabbed the man by the neck and head, twisted, and dropped the corpse before he could even yell. He checked the man’s pockets; no weapon, but he grabbed the ID card and the cell phone. 

Poking his head around the corner, he spotted a staircase and ducked in. Hearing no one, he quickly dialed a number he had memorized for just this situation. At the beep, he quickly entered a ten digit code. When prompted, he stated, “Bond. James Bond.”

A few seconds later, Q was on the line. “Bond. Where are you?”

“Not sure Q. Just escaped my lock up and currently hiding in a staircase. Can you find me via this phone?”

“Got a better lock on you than that phone, Bond. Just wondering where you disappeared to.” Q sighed. “Team’s reached where you were half an hour ago, but as usual you aren’t where you’re supposed to be. Stay where you are. 006 should be there in two minutes.”

“Sorry, Q, you know me. I never pass up a chance to escape.”

Q snorted. “Good to have you back, Bond.”


	10. Unconscious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur is attacked far too often by people with magical help. Good thing he has his own magical help.

Some days Merlin wondered how, regardless of the number of magic users Uther killed or drove out of Camelot, there were still what felt like weekly magic attacks on Arthur. He preferred when the attacks came closer to home, though. Even when it made his attempts to protect the idiot more challenging. Of course, he preferred _anything_ closer to home. He really disliked traveling away from home. His bed wasn’t a down mattress, but it was much more comfortable than sleeping rolled up in his cloak. And he much preferred having someone from the kitchen prepare his dinner to cooking over damp wood.

But here they were, on a journey to the edge of the kingdom to check on a report of brigands robbing the smaller villages. Arthur had decided that they didn’t need to bring any knights, so it was just the two of them.

Of course, the brigands had ambushed them, attacking suddenly, knocking the men off their horses, and driving said horses away. And, of course, the leader of brigands was wearing a magical amulet that allowed the wearer to dodge any blow. Arthur, being his usual prattish self, refused to give up the attack. Even though they had defeated the rest of the band, the leader just did not get hit. Fortunately, he was also only a fair swordsman and only occasionally hit Arthur. It took Merlin far too long to figure out what was protecting the brigand leader, and just as he finally got the amulet off the brigand, said brigand landed a lucky blow against Arthur’s head, knocking him out. Without having to worry any longer about Arthur seeing, Merlin promptly cast a spell, knocking a branch off a tree, knocking the brigand out.

So. Here he was, in the middle of a narrow road, surrounded by unconscious bodies, missing their mounts and all of his herbs. Sighing, he quickly checked the brigands. Any that weren’t dead he bound tightly, using whatever he found—ripped shirts, belts, a long length of vine in one case. (Though he used that on the weakest-looking brigand, just in case.)

Once he was sure everyone was secure, he checked Arthur. He was breathing, and the bruise on his head was just that, a bruise. The bone didn’t feel broken, and he didn’t appear to have any other issues. Hopefully, he’d wake up fairly soon. In the meantime, Merlin dragged him off the road and leaned him up against a tree. It was an extremely slow process, and Merlin was glad for the time he spent hauling Arthur’s armor around; if he hadn’t been practicing with all that weight he never would have been about to budge Arthur.

Disappointed that Arther hadn’t woken up, Merlin decided he better look for help or at least their mounts. He walked a small way away, so he was blocked from Arthur’s sight in case the Prince woke up. Then he concentrated, reaching out and looking for their mounts. Fortunately, Arthur’s horses were well trained, and they hadn’t run far. He hurried down the road and found first one and then the other browsing on grass and low branches just off the track.

He led the horses back to where he had left Arthur and tried to figure out what to do next. He knew Arthur’s mount, Llamrei, was a warhorse, and was trained to help an injured man mount. But that only worked if the man was at least conscious, and could help a little. He sighed again. At least if he had Llamrei lie down, he _might_ get Arthur across the beast’s back. There was no way he was going to lift the heavy git high enough to through him over the saddle.

He tied his horse loosely to a branch, then led Arthur’s mount next to the slumped Prince. Llamrei looked rather bemused as Merlin tried to get her to lie down, but simply lipped at his hair and snuffled noisily. Finally, Merlin collapsed to his knees between the horse and Arthur, groaning. He ran a hand up Llamrei’s leg, sadly. “I can’t remember what he does to….” His voice trailed off as the horse bent her knees, then lay down beside him. “Oh! You marvelous creature. Thank you! Now just stay there while I get this oaf over your back.”

Merlin pushed and pulled at Arthur (and almost trapped himself between the git and the horse more than once) until he managed to get Arther draped over the horse’s back, head and arms hanging down one side, legs on the other.

“Okay. Let’s see if you can get up gently enough, so I can keep him there.” Merlin murmured. He tugged gently on the reins, while holding onto Arthur carefully. Llamrei lurched to her feet, but they managed to keep Arthur on. 

Merlin let Arthur over to the other horse, untied and mounted without dumping the Prince or dropping the reins. He took a deep breath in relief, then set off down the road towards the nearest town.

He was more than a little worried that Arthur hadn’t awaken by the time they made it to the village. But the village was large enough to have a wise woman, and the innkeeper was more than happy to provide food and lodging for the Prince. The blacksmith was more than happy to help carry Arthur and place him in the bed. And a few of the others were willing back to return for the bound brigands, eager to return them to the King’s guard.

Merlin watched carefully, as the wise woman (who clearly had a small healing gift, but just as clearly was no threat to anyone) bandaged Arthur’s head, checked his bones, and finally waved a small container of smelling salts under the Prince’s nose. Beaming when the Prince roused.

“Merlin?” Arthur sat up slowly. “Where are we?”

“You knocked out the leader, but he hit you on the head.” Merlin said. “Llamrei was very helpful in getting you back to town.”

“The brigands.” Arthur started to climb out of the bed, but the wise woman pressed back on his shoulder.

“Your majesty, you need to rest your head a bit.” She whispered.

“I sent men back to collect them. We can ride back to Camelot tomorrow and send some knights to collect them. But you need to rest and eat.”

Arthur sighed and lay back. “Fine. But what about the horses?”

Merlin smiled. “The village is more than happy to put the horses up for us tonight, after you took down the brigands. And as soon as I get you settled with dinner, I’ll head out and make sure they’re well cared form.”

Arthur groaned. “Fine.” He collapsed back against the bed. “But we’re leaving at sunup tomorrow.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “Of course we are.” 


	11. Stitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spiderman finds out he trusts Wade to do more than just stitch him up.

When Peter first became Spiderman, he had to do all his first aid himself. His healing factor was much better than a normal human, but it still took a bit of time to fix everything back up. And anything he could do to help it along made that process even faster. So, he always cleaned, disinfected, and (if need be) stitched things together. But, stitching yourself up isn’t always that easy (and it’s never _fun_.) 

Then he met DeadPool. The first time he was more than bruised, Wade brought him back to a safe house and patched him up. 

Peter was not completely comfortable letting Wade help him out, seeing as he might know Wade’s actual name, but Wade had no idea who he was outside of the Spiderman suit. But he’d been sliced along his shoulder quite deeply, and he knew from experience he couldn’t reach it himself. He figured it would be better to have Wade tape it up than to just leave it alone.

(And seriously, what was with telling everyone his name right off the bat? He was as bad as James Bond. Weren’t spies and masked anti heroes supposed to have secret identities? Not announce the first time you meet what their names were?)

Wade didn’t have much of a first aid kit, and poured Tequila over a gash to disinfect it, then stitched it up. But it surprised Peter when he saw how neatly Wade stitched the wound up. Since he was tired and not feeling so hot, he actually blurted his surprise out loud, then immediately felt bad, thinking Wade would get mad at him for being so rude.

But Wade just laughed. “Baby boy, I’m 6’ 2” and like to wear dresses. I can’t wear too much off the rack, and where do you think my suits come from? Of course I know how to sew.”

“But what’s that got to do with sewing up people?” Peter asked, looking at the neat small stitches.

“How do you think doctors get good?” Wade laughed. Then he frowned and muttered, “I know sometimes they sew chickens, but it’s still practice.”

Peter shrugged. “Either way, it’s much better than I could do.” 

Wade nodded. “It’s tough stitching yourself, one handed is tough, especially when it’s your off-hand.”

After that, it became a bit of a pattern when they patrolled together. If he wasn’t hurt too badly, they had tacos and talked. If he’d gotten banged up, they’d head back to one of Wade’s safe houses and Wade would patch him up. After the first time, Wade never had to resort to Tequila again. Peter suspected he started stocking all his safe houses with first aid kits, just in case he needed them for Peter. 

Then Peter found himself meeting up with Wade outside of patrols. They’d meet at one of Wade’s nicer safe houses and order pizza or tacos and play video games or watch movies together.

One night, after a particularly nasty battle with Doc Ock, when Wade repaired a nasty gash on Peter’s side, Peter found the courage to introduce himself.

Peter’s top was raised enough to show the wound, and his pants were pulled down below his hipbone to keep it out of Wade’s way. Wade was kneeling between Peter’s legs, bent over his lap and carefully stitching a gash that ran from his hip bone nearly to his naval. Fortunately, while it was long, it wasn’t that deep; Peter had managed to at least jerk back enough to avoid being completely gutted.

Wade was muttering to himself about how lucky Peter was as he stitched.

Peter stared down at the top of Wade’s head and realized that Wade was his closest friend. He was always there when Peter needed him, always there to stitch Peter back up. In fact, he’d threaded himself into Peter’s life as neatly as the stitches he used to sew up his wounds. Peter hadn’t realized just how lonely he was before. He was happier now, ate better now, and had someone to call when things fell apart. And the common thread through all of it was Wade.

When Wade finished the last stitch, he tied off the thread and straightened up. “There you go, Baby Boy. That could have been a lot worse. Good thing for your spidey…..” His voice trailed off as his eyes reached Peter’s. 

Peter smiled nervously, mask off and face bare. “Peter.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “My name’s Peter Parker.”

“Wow.” Wade whispered. “Baby boy is right. You’re adorable.” He lifted his hand towards Peter’s cheek, then realized it was holding a needle, and dropped it back down. “But what’s with the big reveal? Not that I’m not glad to see those gorgeous eyes, but what about your secret identity?”

Peter smiled at him and shrugged. “I just realized that you’re my best friend. You’re the one I trust to stitch me up and to have my back. I figure I can trust you with my face and my name.”


	12. "Don't Move"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spider strength is awesome. Until it puts your favorite arachnid themed hero in danger.

There weren’t that many things Deadpool regretted about staying New York. The number of places to get good tacos was definitely a good thing. The fact that something was around to entertain you when you couldn’t fall asleep, no matter what the time was nice. The opportunity to spend time with Spidey babe was definitely awesome. 

What he could do without was the number of times the city seemed to get attacked by aliens. And he couldn’t even leave the city and let Iron Douche and his boy band handle it, because Spidey was an actual Boy Scout, all honorable and helpful and first in line to volunteer. Not to mention he’d be all puppy dog eyes and (gasp) disappointed if Wade even mentioned heading off on a road trip.

On the plus side, Spidey relaxed his rules about unaliving when it came to vicious aliens. Which meant Wade could bring out his katanas and as many guns as he could carry. It also made targeting a lot easier as this round of creepy crawly aliens were a nasty shade of blue. Oh, and they rode around on creepy flying millipede-like creatures. Too many legs and the power of flight? Ugh. 

Deadpool tried to keep an eye on Spiderman when they were fighting, but when it was a city-wide battle and your fighting buddy attached himself to things, it was hard to keep track. Not to mention Captain Spangles had put him on rescuing a group of kids from a school. And Spidey had nothing on Cap when it came to the look of extreme disappointment. 

Only problem was, Deadpool had gotten half of the building emptied before one of the flying bugs spun out of control and took out a corner. He rushed the teachers and the students as much as he could, because he could see the wall was going to go. But he knew panicking them wouldn’t help. 

“Anyone in range. That creepy crawly took out a chunk of the roof of the school here, still got a few to evacuate. Could use a little help.” Deadpool muttered, guiding the last few classes down the hall and out the door.

“On my way, Pool.” Spidey’s voice came back. 

A few seconds later Pool could hear Spiderman directing the students outside of the building further away. 

“Webbing up the worst of it out here.” Spider man said. “How many left?”

Deadpool looked around. “Don’t see any more, think we might be done.” Then he heard something down the hall. “Hold on… gotta check something.” He dashed down toward the noise and found a young girl trying to pull a woman from behind a desk. “Hey there, cutie. What’s going on?”

The girl, she looked about 6, frowned. “The ceiling fell on Miss Barnes. Now she won’t get up.”

“Got a teacher down and a student.” Wade reported. 

“Hurry Wade, this roof’s about to go.” Spidey said. 

Wade grunted a reply as he hurried over to the unconscious woman. He grabbed her under the arms and scooped her up. “Okay, sweetie, I’ll carry her, and you lead the way.” 

The little girl nodded and turned to head towards the door, looking back over her shoulder to make sure Deadpool was following.

“Pool! Don’t move!” Wade snapped his head up and froze in place. Spiderman was standing in the door of the room and staring at the ceiling. 

“Honey, come back here to me.” Wade whispered.

The little girl turned at scooted back to Wade. “But that’s Spiderman. He’s a good guy.”

“Sure is kiddo, so if he tells you to stay still you know it’s the right thing to do.”

She nodded at him and walked closer to him, “Okay.”

“What’s up web head?” Deadpool asked. 

Spiderman shook his head. “Not sure. Something feels off and…”

There was a loud crack, and the ceiling dropped. Deadpool dropped the woman he was carrying, and grabbed the girl, arching his body over both of them, hoping to protect them.

The ceiling stopped inches above his back, much to his surprise. However, he immediately scooped up the teacher and hustled the girl ahead of him towards the door. 

Then froze. Peter was holding the ceiling up, keeping it off of them.

“Hurry Pool. Get them out.” Spiderman snapped.

“You take them, I can survive if the ceiling falls on me.” Wade protested.

“Doesn’t matter. I can hold it, you can’t. Get them out.”

“I’ll be back for you.” Deadpool said and hurried the pair out. He made it out the front door, and was frantically looking for someone to hand the teacher over to when there was a crumping roar, and the building collapsed completely.

Deadpool wanted to lose it. In fact, yellow was screaming. But he held it together long enough to bring the girl and the teacher over to an ambulance and turn them over to the paramedics.

But once they were taken care of, he ran back to the building and started frantically digging through the rubble to get to the door. Cap was saying something to him over his earpiece, but Wade ignored it and just kept digging.

He lost track of time and fingers. But he’d heal. If he didn’t get Spiderman out, the best thing about New York would be gone. And he didn’t think he’d survive that.

Eventually, there were other people around him helping dig. And eventually, they reached the room where Peter was. But Wade wasn’t sure if they were going to be in time. And the room was completely flattened.

But now there were people who had heavy equipment, and someone hooked up the ceiling to a truck and levered it enough to Deadpool to crawl in. He found Spiderman curled up in a small space next to the supporting wall and pulled him out carefully. The minute he was out, Tin Man took him and flew him back to the tower. 

Cap clapped him on the shoulder. “He’ll be fine. Banner’s already back there, and he’s got everything set up. They’ll probably have him stabilized by the time we get there.”

Deadpool looked at him, stunned. “Get there?”

“Yeah. You’re coming, aren’t you? I know he’ll want to see you when he wakes up. You can let him know you got the teacher out.”

Deadpool looked at him, stunned. He’d never been invited to the tower before. He’d broken in, sure, but they’d never asked him there. They only ever tolerated him in the battles because Spiderman insisted.

Clint walked up on this other side. “Ready? You can catch a ride with us.”

Deadpool followed the team back, too exhausted and worried to say anything. Unfortunately, the voices weren’t being quiet. White was listing all the things that could have gone wrong with Spiderman, from a broken back to brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. Yellow was just screaming in panic.

He didn’t notice the worried looks everyone kept giving him; none of them could ever remember Deadpool being quiet, much less silent. 

He sat in a hard chair outside of a hospital room, waiting as calmly as he could. It was tough. He wasn’t sure what it is that makes a hospital feel like a hospital… the smell? The odd-colored walls? The weird lighting? All he knows is just being one pushes his stress level through the roof.

He tries to sit and wait, but after only a few minutes he’s striding up and down the halls, trying to only answer his voices in his head. He guesses he’s not too successful, since everyone who passes him looks at him oddly. 

After what feels like years, Dr. Banner walks up to him nervously. He only says two words, but they’re enough to shut both the voices down.

“He’s awake.” Dr. Banner says, still several feet away.

Wade looks at him. “Is he okay?” It’s hard to read the man’s expression. Is he nervous about talking to Wade, or is he worried about Spidey’s odds?

Dr. Banner grins. “He’ll be fine. He’s already healing. Should be ready to go home in a day or two.”

Wade grins. “Awesome. Let him know I’ll be there to patrol with him again when he’s ready.” He turns and starts for home, finally able to relax.

“Wade…” Dr. Banner calls after him. 

Wade turns, confused. “Yeah Dr. Green?”

“Aren’t you going to go see him?”

Wade tilts his head. “See him?”

“He’s asking for you.” Dr. Banner says, holding his arm out, pointing.

“Me?” Wade asks. 

Dr. Banner laughs. “Yes, you. Now are you coming or not?”

Wade grins. Well, tonight was ending a lot better than he thought.


	13. Adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a·dren·al·ine  
> /əˈdren(ə)lən/  
> a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress, increasing rates of blood circulation, breathing, and carbohydrate metabolism and preparing muscles for exertion.

Before the spider bit him, Peter B. was an awkward, socially inept kid. Aunt May had been called in more than once to talk to his teachers, because he had a hard time staying in his seat. He interrupted too often. He lost his homework between home and class. He was constantly irritating the other kids and getting called “weird.”

After the spider bite, things got incredibly worse at first. When everything distracts you, having your senses dialed up to 15 made staying focused even hard. 

But once he became Spiderman, things suddenly clicked. Spending his nights out swinging around and stopping crime should have made things harder; after all, he was suddenly short on time, short on sleep, short on body parts without aches or bruises. But instead, he found himself doing better in school, and sleeping better when he got a chance. He still was horrible at making and keeping friends, but at least now he could blame it on trying to keep his identity secret.

Then things fell apart again. MJ left. His life fell apart. And he realized that living on an adrenaline rush might get him to hyper focus, but it wasn’t fair to expect other people to want to live the same way. She’d been right. He wasn’t there when she needed him; he’d always had something important going on, and it was rarely her. And when the adrenaline finally runs out, you crash, _hard_.

Getting sucked into Miles’ dimension had probably saved his life; it had kicked him out of his post-adrenaline stupor and made him realize that he needed to get more functional. And that he could, because he wasn’t the only one like him. There were a lot of other Spidermen who kept their lives together and not just live from one rush of adrenaline to another. 

He just had to figure out how to do it himself.

He tried getting back together with MJ, telling her what he’d figured out, and that he was ready to work on changing. She gently turned him down, saying she was his friend, but that’s all she could be. He couldn’t blame her, if he had any choice he wouldn’t be taking another chance on himself. But he was stuck with Peter B. So he told her he’d keep in touch and wished her all the best.

And now, here he was, sitting on the edge of a roof with his Spiderman suit on (but the mask off, he liked the feel of the wind in his hair.) 

He needed to figure out what came next. His job wasn’t _bad_ ; but he could have done a lot more with his life. He’d never pushed because the more you made the more they expected from you, and that made it hard to explain two hour lunches that you spent taking down crime lords, or the outrageous number of mornings you ran in late. So now he was making barely enough to cover rent on a crappy apartment and living like a college student (mattress on the floor and kitchen only full of ramen and Red Bull.)

But some of the things he’d seen on the other spider people had been incredible and had gotten him thinking. He’d put together a headset that tapped into the police radios before, but what if he expanded it and put together his own AI?

“Spidey Pants!” A voice called out loudly behind him, making him jump. 

“Wade! Do not take advantage of your friend bennies and sneak up on me or I’ll figure out a way to convince my Spidersense you’re an enemy.” Peter yelped.

Wade laughed. “Sorry, it’s just so funny. Especially when you end up on a wall or a ceiling.” He walked over and sat down next to Peter on the edge. “Any other exciting adventures in the multiverse?”

Peter snorted. “No, thank goodness. I’ll leave all the dimension-hopping to you from now on. Always thought you made that up.” He shook his head. 

“So, why you sitting here all depressed like a major mopester?” Wade asked. 

“Trying to figure out what to do with my life.” Peter sighed.

“Aren’t you supposed to go through that emo what do I do with my life crap way back when you were a teen?” Wade jabbed him in the side with an elbow. “Please tell me you’re not planning on changing your suit to black and listening to MCR while swinging around New York. Cause let me tell you, that’s not a good look combined with the dad bod you’re rocking.”

Peter snorted. “Well, one, I was too busy trying to finish homework while dealing with Green Goblin in high school. And two, I thought being Spiderman was all I ever needed.”

“And now?” Wade asked curiously.

“And now I realized that my life is pretty empty. No family, no friends, and my job is pointless. And I have a dad bod.”

“Okay, one, what about me? Ouch.” Wade slapped his hands to his heart like he’d been shot. “And two, so get a new job?”

Peter groaned. “Doing what? I’m working in a dead-end job doing basic programming. The only other things I have experience in are taking photos and making Spiderman suits.”

Wade hummed. “But you make all your own tech, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Peter replied. “But the liability insurance required for marketing web slingers would be astronomical.”

Wade laughed. “I didn’t mean sell what you use. But use your smarts to make something that would be useful for other people.”

“Like what?” Peter asked curiously.

“I don’t know! You’re the super smarty pants, not me. What about just marketing the materials you used to make your webs? Couldn’t they be used for something other than swinging around the big apple? Or get into what all the other cool kids are into and make some nanotech. Oh! Or an AI. Girls love AIs. Just stay away from genetic manipulating; that shit never goes well. Jurassic Park and Resident Evil made that clear.”

Peter laughed. “By that argument, Terminator should keep me out of AIs.”

“Spidey, Spidey, Spidey. Terminator wasn’t an AI, Terminator was a _cyborg_. AIs are cute little voices that _help_ people.”

“Okay, AIs are good and cyborgs are bad.” Peter breathed out and put his chin on his knee. “But how to I even get started? Most of my equipment is locked in a storeroom because I don’t have space for it in my apartment.” He groaned. “As a matter of fact, I have to find a place to move it sometime soon because the storage fee is only paid through the end of the month.”

“Hmmm.” Wade said. “Well, I can help you out there.” 

Peter turned his head and looked up at Wade. “How?”

Wade shrugged. “One thing I have a lot of is rooms.” Then he slapped the side of his head. “I _know_ I have a lot of guns too, he doesn’t want to hear about those.”

Peter snorted. “Must be Yellow.”

Wade winced. “Yeah. He really likes guns. As I was saying, I have a lot of rooms. Some of them are even in good condition. I could give you one as a lab. Oh! And I have my own crew of nerds. We can help you get equipment and test things out. And I know a lawyer.”

Peter laughed. “I know Matt, too, Pool. And he’s not the kind of lawyer I’d need.”

Wade shrugged. “But lawyers know lawyers. He can find us someone who does do the stuff you need.”

Peter hummed. “Maybe you’re right. And I had this great idea, webs that act like a taser. And webs that _don’t_ carry electricity. Would be awesome if Shocker gets out again. And I’d like to enhance my…”

Wade clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Now, why don’t we go beat up some baddies. It’ll make you feel better, and it’ll help you work on that dad bod. We’ll get you a lab tomorrow and move your stuff before your lease ends.”

“Okay.” Peter replied. “Let’s go get our adrenaline fix.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a weird relationship with adrenaline. In an emergency, I'm all cool and calm headed and get everything done how it should be. Problem is, after the emergency is over and everyone is okay, I fall apart. The number of times I've literally passed out after the car accident is over, everyone is out of the vehicle and the report was given to the police and now I'm on my way home and wow...everything is going black all of a sudden... So I've done a lot of research on Adrenaline. Then found out my whole family has ADHD to different degrees. And apparently ADHD and adrenaline have a fascinating relationship.  
> Can't imagine Spiderman actually passing out after a battle, but he does seem to have a lot of the ADHD characteristics.


	14. Tear-Stained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 5 times Wade's mask is tear-stained, and 1 time Wade's tear-stained. (And one of these days Peter is going to figure out how he makes his mask do that!)

Deadpool’s mask is amazing. Peter’s tried to show _any_ expression through his mask and it doesn’t matter what face he’s making behind the mask, the mask just shows a neutral, bland expression. Unless his jaw is hanging down in shock. But then he just looks stupid. But somehow, you can tell how Deadpool feels just by looking at his mask. Peter does not understand how it works; but then he also does not understand how Deadpool carries half the stuff he does. It just seems to vanish. Peter’s half convinced he has a bag of holding on his utility belt.

They’re on a rooftop, taking a brief break during their patrol, deciding what they want to eat. Pool wants tacos. Of course he wants tacos. He always wants tacos.

Peter would insult Wade for only ever eating tacos, but let’s face it. Peter’s a broke college student and basically lives on ramen with Mac and cheese as an occasional splurge. Tacos at least have a complete protein, as well as vegetables. So he has no leg to stand on when it comes to commenting on a non-varied diet. But he’s tired of tacos. 

“How about Thai? Or Pizza? Or... Hot Dogs?” He suggests.

“What’s wrong with tacos?” Wade whines.

“I have reached my limit of tacos for the week.” Peter says, deciding that he really is. “Pizza or Thai. No Mexican.”

“Oh, come on, Spidey. Everyone loves tacos, and there’s no such thing as a limit for tacos.” Wade laughs.

“No fucking tacos” Peter says, stomping his foot like a five-year-old.

Wade claps his hands to his cheeks. “Spidey! Is that your first swear word? I’m so proud!” And then he’s wiping _actual tears_ away from his eyes. How does his mask do that? 

Peter can’t decide if he wants to swear at Wade again or laugh.

They end up eating pizza, though, so he calls it a win.

*****

Tacos aren’t the only thing the two share. Deadpool is a fan of street food and any junk food. And, let’s face it, Peter is a fan of free food, no matter what it is. After a nasty battle with Doc Ock, trying to stop the tentacled man from trying to… Well, Peter’s not really sure. After the third monologue attempt, he honestly just started tuning the villain out and instead spent the fight in a “yo mama” insult battle with Deadpool. The jury’s till out on who won that battle. Though Peter’s glad that most of the battle was high enough above the streets that the general public wasn’t exposed to most of the comments. Also, he’s pretty sure that Doc Ock was so appalled by their behavior that he let them catch him and web him up just to escape the two of them. Whatever. Peter’s going to call it a win anyhow. 

So they grabbed ice cream to celebrate and Peter swung them up to the top of a bridge to breathe some fish scented but slighter fresher air. 

“So Spidey,” Wade asked, swinging his legs and taking bites out of his ice cream. Peter shudders. Just the image makes his teeth hurt and gives him sympathetic brain freeze.

“What?” Peter responds. He is eating his ice cream like a normal person. Not like a super healing weirdo.

“Why don’t you have extra arms? Doc Ock looks a lot more like a spider than you do.”

“Tentacles, Pool, he’s a cetacean, not an arachnid.” Peter replies.

“Well, you could have extra legs and be a spider. Or oh! I know what would be even better—you could command spiders. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Calling your hordes of spiders to attack.”

Peter shuddered. “Ugh. Where would I keep them? I don’t have pockets in this suit.”

Wade frowned. “Well, you could wear a cape, but then it turns out the cape is actually just spiders.”

Peter shook his head. “Nope. Edna says no capes. Besides, I highly doubt anyone would call me friendly neighborhood Spiderman if I travelled around with a mob of spiders. Arachnophobia is a thing. A very common thing.” 

“Hmm. Good point.” Wade nods, then ducks. A seagull seems to have taken a dislike to Wade and dive bombs him. “Stupid winged rat.” He grunts.

Peter laughs. “He’s just agreeing with my assessment of carting around spiders.”

“Well, you don’t have eight legs, you don’t have spiders, why exactly are you spiderman?” Wade protests, taking an even larger bit of his ice cream and waving his other arm wildly.

Peter watches him nervously, wondering if he’s going to have to web him to the bridge to keep him from falling. “I climb walls, spin webs, catch thieves just like flies. Haven’t you heard the song?”

“That was all fine and good when you started, but now it’s time to level up!” Deadpool exclaims. Then the seagull dive bombs his head. Wade jerks to avoid the noisy bird and drops his ice cream over the edge. He’s sitting there staring over the edge and watching the dessert plummet into the river, tears running down his mask.

Peter looks at him, shaking his head, then bursts out laughing. “Here you go Pool.” And hands his cone over. “You can have some of mine.” One of these days, Peter is really going to ask Pool how he gets his mask to do that.

*****

“You know, your villains are ridiculous.” Wade says in disgust. “I mean, seriously, who picks a Gibbon.” They’re sitting on the edge of yet another building, after apprehending the ape-like villain

“Why are they my villains? I don’t pick them out. Why aren’t they New York’s villains?” Peter protests.

“I had to google it. Gorilla, yes, Man-Ape, why not? Gibbon? I mean, not only is the animal ridiculous looking, but the word just sounds stupid.” Wade laughs. “I mean, say it. Gibbon. Giiiiiboooon. It’s ridiculous.” 

“I didn’t name him. And I certainly didn’t design that costume. And again, not actually my villain.” Peter argues. 

“Of course, then there’s Grizzly. Who runs around in a giant mechanical bear suit.” 

Peter frowns. “What’s your point?”

“And our eight legged octopus dude from the other day.” Wade giggles.

Peter has to admit he enjoys seeing Wade laugh. “Don’t forget Rhino. And Leap-Frog. Not sure you got a chance to meet him, think you would have loved him.”

Wade falls backwards, laughing harder and grabbing his stomach. “And there’s that Lizard too.”

Peter grins. “Maybe I should start a zoo?”

Wade sits up. “No, it’s a furry convention.” He gasps out. Then he’s off laughing again. This time he’s laughing so hard tears are running down his face.

Peter is _definitely_ going to figure out how he does that. 

*****

Peter and Wade usually meet up on the roof near Peter’s apartment before patrol. And usually, Deadpool’s already there when Peter arrives. But tonight, no one’s on the roof.

Peter checks his phone, just to see if Deadpool sent him a text. But nothing. Shrugging, he drops to the edge of the roof and decides to catch up on emails while he waits.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s starting to get worried. Wade still hasn’t shown up. He decides to go check Wade’s apartment, just in case. The man isn’t the most organized, but he usually notifies Peter if he’s going to be out of town.

He swings to Wade’s and sees the lights are on. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything. Wade doesn’t really worry about wasting money, not like Peter has to. So he shrugs and pushes the unlocked living room window and lets himself in. 

Wade is sitting on the couch watching _Golden Girls_. 

Peter hops over the back of the couch and looks over at Wade. Who’s got tears running down his mask.

“Wade? You okay?” Peter asks, concerned. 

“Betty White died.” Wade says. “And I’m sad.”

Peter frowned. “She’s not dead, Wade.” 

Wade nodded. “She is. I saw it on Facebook.”

Peter pulled out his phone. “Nope, nope, and nope.” He scrolls rapidly. “There is nothing on her death. Someone’s pranking you.”

“What?” Wade grabs Peter’s phone out of his hands and reads over the search results. “Why that… I’m gonna kill him.” 

Peter grabs his phone back. “No killing. And how about we go out and cheer you up by capturing bad guys, then eat some tacos?”

One of these days, Peter’s gonna figure that mask out. But right now he needs to cheer up a cranky merc.

*****

New York has some beautiful skylines. At it’s particularly amazing at sunrise. But it’s a much nicer photograph than an actuality. Case in point, Wade and Peter are sitting on a pile of shipping crates, watching the sunrise over the water. They’re partly resting up from their last battle and partly waiting for the cops to arrive and haul away the webbed up crooks they caught in the middle of a weapons deal. Peter won’t leave because he wants to make sure the weapons are contained. 

So they’re sitting up high enough not to be seen, but they’ve got a good view of all the participants and the weapons. And the beautiful sunrise. 

“Look at that view, Petey.” Wade says, waving his arm towards the horizon. “It makes me so proud to be a New Yorker. Not everyone gets views like that.”

Peter admits it probably is objectively nice, but the smell here is awful. Trash, diesel fuel, sweaty bodies and way too much rotting fish and who knows what else is making his eyes water. “I guess it’s okay.” Peter replies.

“Okay! Spidey Dude! That is the most amazing view I’ve ever seen.” And he’s doing it again. He’s wiping away a tear. Peter’s just not sure if it’s from the stench or the view. 

*****

Peter and Wade don’t work with the Avengers that often; mainly because Peter doesn’t agree with their rules. And isn’t that hilarious? Wade’s usually the one complaining about rules and restrictions, and Peter is the one putting limits on what weapons he can carry on patrol, and what exactly constitutes too much force. 

But the Avengers are a problem for a whole different reason. It’s not so much that they have rules, it’s how much they want to know about Peter. Who he is, for example, and where he lives, and how to get in touch with him at any time. And it’s not a two-way exchange. Well, Peter would know who all of them are (but let’s be real, they don’t actually have secret identities.) But while they would expect Peter to drop everything and coming running when they call, when Peter asks for help, they may or may not be available. And they’d want to know all the details before they agree.

So, no, Peter isn’t an Avenger. There are times he helps; after all, it’s his city too. 

They’d called and asked Peter and Wade to help hunt down a rogue scientist who had stolen some information from Stark Tower. (And that’s another reason Peter’s not an Avenger. Stark’s losing data all the time. For a genius, he leaves an awful lot of holes in his security.)

Unfortunately, by the time they’d found him, he’d managed to create some knock off Iron Man suits. They weren’t quite as powerful as the originals, since they didn’t have any vibranium or arc reactors. But getting shot with a machine gun rather than a pulse laser is still a bit painful.

And, as usual, they don’t have any backup. They finally manage to trap the creep, and Peter’s got him webbed to a wall, when his spider sense goes absolutely crazy. He spins around, and sees a muzzle pointed at him, dodges, and ends up running right in front of another weapon. The pain is awful, and his senses are still jangling. Then something hits his head and everything goes black.

When he wakes up, he’s in a brightly lit room. Frantic, this isn’t the first time he’s gotten captured, he feels for his mask, then relaxes slightly when he realizes it’s still on. 

“It’s okay baby boy. I made them keep everything covered.” It’s Wade’s voice, but it sounds odd. Thick and almost like he’s been crying.

Peter turns his head, and there’s Wade, mask off, sitting next to him.

“You’re in Avengers tower. They pulled two bullets out of your shoulder, Dr. Hulk says no actual damage and you should heal up fine. Mild concussion, but again, should heal up fine.” He wipes at his face, and Peter realizes he’s been crying. Tear tracks run down his cheeks.

“You okay?” Peter croaks.

“Yeah. Just a little worried for a while. You didn’t look so hot, so I brought you in here.” Wade shrugged. “Stayed with you the whole time to make sure they didn’t look under the mask or keep any bodily fluids.”

Peter grimaces. “Ugh Wade. That sounds so gross. Can’t you just say blood like a normal person.”

Wade grins. “And there’s my buddy. Always know you’re getting better when you start insulting me. You ready to go home?”

“What about the…” He coughs, then grimaces again when that pulls at his shoulder.

“The scientist? I got him tied up, and he’s currently in a cell. Tin Man is busy dissecting the suits. And we’re free to go whenever you feel good enough to leave.”

Peter smiles. “I’ve had enough of hospitals and I know you hate them. Let’s go.”


	15. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wade has scars. Peter just doesn't seem to care.

Wade has scars. No, wait. That’s an understatement. Wade’s pretty sure that there’s not an inch of him that _doesn’t_ have scars. He knows they’re horrifying. He doesn’t wear that bright red full body condom just for shits and giggles, after all. It’s the only way he can get around without hearing screams and retching when he walks down the street.

Peter, however, is perfect. What Wade doesn’t understand is why the man wants anything to do with him. He’s a mess emotionally, physically, and mentally. A complete three-ring circus of issues. A three alarm dumpster fire of insanity. Three strikes and he’s completely out of the sanity pool.

But for some reason, Peter doesn’t seem to see his scars. Who’s he kidding, unless the guy is _blind_ he sees the scars. But somehow he just doesn’t _care_. 

Take today, for example. They were in a meeting with the Avengers to debrief after yet another alien invasion. Clint’s in the meeting, so Wade rolled his mask up. And immediately he hears gagging from Stark’s end of the table. “Really Wade, some of us are trying to digest our meals here.”

Wade ignores him. He knows how annoying it is to be missing out on vital information, so he’ll put up with Stark’s asshole comments. He knows his skin isn’t pretty; the jerk doesn’t have to rub it in, though.

But Peter, Peter’s leaning over the  table, practically snarling into Stark’s face. “Cool it, Stark. Thought you were all about inclusivity and full disclosure.”

“What does that creep’s gnarly face have to do with anything.” Stark asks, throwing his arms up in the air.

“He does that for Clint.” Peter growls. “We put up with your ridiculous posturing. You can put up with him making sure Clint knows what’s going on.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Stark snaps, crossing his arms across his chest and glaring.

Peter looks like he wants to push it, but he finally collapses back into his chair and lets the meeting go on. 

Wade just shakes his head. The guy’s such a boy scout. Cannot leave an underdog undefended.

And now, the two of them are sitting on a roof eating tacos and Peter’s still fuming about the meeting. 

“Petey,” Wade says. “It’s no big deal. My skin is a mess, I know it, you know it, everyone who sees me without my mask knows it.” He shrugs. 

Peter glares at him. He’s got his mask off, so Wade gets the full power of the glare. “For one thing, it’s bad manners. For another, your scars aren’t that bad.”

Wade tilts his head. “I look like a cross between a shar pei and an avocado.”

Peter frowns. “They’re just scars, Wade. Everyone has them. Some of us can just hide our.”

Wade laughs. “Right. You have scars.”

“I do. But not all of them are out where you can see them.” Peter answers. He pulls up his sleeve. “See?” 

Wade looks. He can see faint tracings of scars on the man’s arm. They don’t show up well, especially not in the faint light up here on the roof. But they are there. 

“And the ones that really do the damage and cause the most pain aren’t the scars you can see, anyhow. They’re the ones inside that change how you feel or don’t feel,” Peter tells him. “Stark’s scars make him act like an asshole to other people. Your scars are making you try to be a better person.”

Wade smiles. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

Peter grins. “Amazing. You’re a poet.”

Wade shakes his head. “No, that’s Kahlil Gibran. It’s something Vanessa used to tell me.”

Peter smiles. “Well, he was right and Vanessa was right. Scars don’t make you good or bad, and suffering isn’t good in and of itself. It’s what you do after your scars have healed that matters. Do you let the pain be your evil origin story or do you stand up and protect others?”

Wade laughs. “Getting a little deep there, spidey pants.”

Peter grins ruefully. “Sorry. Just hate seeing you down. Especially over something that doesn’t really matter.” Peter looks briefly panicked. “Not that your scars don’t matter, or that you’re being ridiculous. It’s just that Stark’s opinion doesn’t matter.”

Wade smiles back at Peter. “I know what you meant. And I don’t really care what he says. He just says it so loud it’s tough to ignore sometimes.”

“Well, I think you’re amazing, scars and all.” And he goes back to staring up in the sky, eating his taco.

Wade guesses he can live with that. He does hate his scars, but right now, sitting with Spiderman, he kind of feels like they aren’t that important. After all, the people he really cares about don’t seem to be bothered by them.


	16. Pinned Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doc Ock is a giant pain in the... everything.

Sometimes Peter B. Parker wonders if the man down on the corner who keeps telling him to wear a tinfoil hat to prevent the “brain spies” from learning all his secrets is right. All he knows is that it seems like any time the Avengers are out of town on a mission, and Wade is out on a job, everything goes to hell. It happens too often to be coincidence, and he really wants to know how the criminals always seem to know.

While he doesn’t really count on the Avengers for help, it would be nice to know that if he got killed, there would be someone around to at least make sure the city wasn’t completely destroyed. Wade’s a different story. He’s always more than willing to join in any time Peter needs someone at his back. 

Peter’s now way behind on sleep, already called in Daredevil, and seriously (well, for about five minutes) wondered if there was any way to put out a call across the multiverse to get someone to give him half an hour to actually eat something.

But, someone has to handle this, and there isn’t any way to pull in any of the other Spider people that doesn’t involve destabilizing all of reality, so he’s just going to have to suck it up. Though maybe he can check the community pages. Maybe the villains have the equivalent of Comic Con that they advertise ahead of time. It would explain why so far this week he’s dealt with Sandman, Rhino and Shocker. At least they weren’t working together. And he’s made it to Friday. Wade’s supposed to be back tonight, provided everything goes according to schedule. And according to Wade, the only thing you can count on is nothing going to schedule. So it might be weeks.

At least, with the number of bigger menaces out on the streets, random robberies and assaults are down. On the other hand, since it is Friday night, the number of random citizens wandering around is way up. If anyone picks tonight for an attack, a lot of people are going to be in danger.

Peter decided he better keep moving. If he sits still too long, there’s a good chance he might just fall asleep. So he’s been swinging around the city, looking out for any trouble. It’s been quiet, and he decided he’s going to risk it and take a break to grab some pizza or a hot dog. He swings down to a food truck that doesn’t look like the line is too long. But the second he lands, his spider sense goes off _hard_. He doesn’t even pause; he was back in the air in seconds, looking for the source of the alarm. 

He groaned when he spots Doc Ock scaling a building. He was really hoping for something simple and easy to deal with. But Doc Ock means, at best, major property damage. If he’s really in a bad mood, people could die. So, he swung over before he really had time to think about it. 

“Hey Doc, what’s with all the action this week. You guys got a Crim Con going on?” He yelled as he landed further up the building from the villain.

“Spiderman. How lovely. And what on earth are you rambling on about?”

“A Crim Con. Like a Furry Convention, but for criminals. You all come into town in your costumes and party together. Maybe have some break out sessions on how to deal with the stress of poor planning.” 

“I have no idea why you’re prattling on, but you’re in my way.” Doc Ock reached for him with two arms, claws snapping viciously. 

“So sorry!” Peter laughed. “All those extra appendages just take up so much space. Ever thought about a tentacle-ectomy? Would make it much easier to travel.” He dodged quickly, keeping out of reach of the angry tentacles.

After that, things just get messy. Doc Ock is not in a cheerful mood, and Peter realized very quickly that skipping meals and not sleeping for days is not a good training regime. He barely stayed ahead of the snapping claws. And he doesn’t have enough breath to yell comments at the creep, which is really annoying. 

“Not up to your usual level of performance, there Spiderman. I think that evaluation of you being brilliant and lazy was right. You’re not even trying.” Doc Ock gloated, as a claw drove deep into the wall just inches from Peter’s head. 

“Just didn’t want to make you look bad.” Peter replies, wondering if he can get out of range quickly so he can catch his breath.

“I’m not the one looking bad right now. You don’t look like a spider right now, you look more like a walrus.”

“A walrus? Walruses can’t swing.”

“My point exactly.” Doc Ock smiles. And this time he doesn’t miss. One point of his claw goes right through Peter’s shoulder, pinning him with his back against the wall. “Well, well, well. Not a spider, you’re a pinned fly, my boy.” 

The pain is awful. The edges of his vision are greying out, and he’s not sure he can move his arm.

Doc Ock shifts closer. “Well, too bad. I don’t have any chloroform with me, though I hear you can use the freezer in a pinch. I’m sure I can find a large enough one in New York to hold this spider.”

“I’d make an awful display.” Peter grunts. “Not enough legs.”

Doc Ock shrugs. “I could always tack a few extras on.”

Peter braces his feet against the wall, and reaches across his body with his good arm, grasping the claw in his shoulder, pulling as hard as he can to yank himself free. It comes loose in a rush, and he falls. He takes far too long to figure out up from down and barely manages to catch himself on a web before he hits the ground. Unfortunately, catching himself sends shooting pains up his arm and this time, he does black out.

*****

When he comes to, Doc Ock is gone, and Peter feels black and blue from head to toe. He needs food, sleep, and back up as soon as possible. He levers himself up off the ground and starts staggering back home, hoping like crazy that Wade will be back when he gets there.


	17. Stay with Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *This is a continuation of "Pinned Down," because it's been a crappy, stressful week and I'm really not in the mood to hurt anyone else today.*  
> Peter is not doing too well after a fight with Doc Ock, and Wade's there to patch him up.

Peter makes it two blocks before he realizes he’s losing too much blood and too sore to walk the whole way home. He collapses against a wall and digs his phone out of his pocket. He hits the button to call Wade and hopes the merc is already on his way home. If not, maybe he can send his friend with the cab to at least get him home. 

“Hey Spidey, how’s it hanging?” Wade’s voice answers, sounding cheerful.

“Not so good Red. Need some help. You home yet?” Peter’s voice sounds faint even to himself. He hopes Wade can hear him.

“Where are you?” Wade must have heard, he’s gone into what Peter thinks of as his working voice. Clipped, focused, ready for business.

“Not too far from that Bodega with the churros you like.” Peter gasps. 

“On my way.” Wade says. “Just walked in the apartment. Just going to drop everything and come get you. Can you walk?”

Peter tries to think. It’s getting harder, and everything is getting fuzzy. “Don’t think so.”

“Okay. Calling Dopinder, he’ll meet us there. Hold on one second. Don’t get off the phone. I need to to stay with me on the phone, okay? I’ll be right back.” 

Peter hears the click, and Wade puts him on hold. It’s dark out, and there aren’t many people out, but he probably shouldn’t stand here in the open where it’s obvious he’s hurt. Peter staggers around a corner into a narrow alleyway and collapses against the wall. He wants to stay standing, but he’s slipping down, and decides he might as well just sit. His shoulder is throbbing, and he can feel the blood running down his side. Oh. Yeah. He should do something about that.

He turns and looks, and the hole is bigger than he expected. Worse than a knife wound, not as bad as the time he got shot. But still a lot of blood. Not knowing what else to do, he webs the wound closed. At least that will keep the blood inside him, though he doesn’t think that’s really an improvement. 

Funny. He can hear Wade. He’s still blocks from home, there’s no way Wade’s here yet. 

“Baby boy. Pick up the phone.” 

Oh. That’s right. He called Wade. He puts the phone to his ear and mumbles. “Hey Wade.”

“There you are. Had me worried. You need to stay with me so we can find you, okay Spidey?” Wade says.

“K.” Peter says. “Don’t feel so good.”

“I can hear that. Are you bleeding?” Wade asks in his calm voice.

“Yeah. Doc Ock put a hole in m’ shoulder.” Peter barely has enough air to talk. He has to stop and pant after just that brief sentence.

“Did you web it up?” Wade asks. Peter can hear street sounds behind him. He must be on his way already. 

“Yeah. But was out fr a while.” Peter’s got his head against the wall now, it’s awfully heavy.

“Okay. So you may have already lost a bit of blood. No problem. We’ll get you, then get you all patched up.” Wade says. “Of course we’re going to have to make you drink a few gallons of water to get your fluids back up. And you’re going to need a lot of fuel to heal. Feel like combining the two and having stew? Or gatorade and pizza?”

Peter shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t care. He just wants to sleep.

“Spidey? Spidey.” Wade’s voice is getting more urgent, but Peter is so comfortable right now…

“Peter!” Wade’s voice snaps out, urgent and scared. The fear does more to wake up Peter than anything else.

“Wha?” He says. “Wha’s wrong, Wade?” He opens his eyes, and tries to sit up a bit straighter.

“Spidey, you need to stay with me. Keep talking to me. I’ll be there soon, but you have to stay awake until we find you, okay? You don’t have to talk a lot, but you have to let me know you’re still conscious, okay baby boy?”

“Kay.” Peter replies. “Jus tired.”

“I know. And as soon as we get you back and patched up, you can sleep for a week if you want. But right now I need to awake, okay? I know it sucks, but hang in there.”

“Kay.” Peter replies. “Wan p’zza.”

“Sounds good.” Wade says, and Peter can almost hear the smile in his voice. “All the pizza. I’ll put the order in while Dopinder drives us back and it’ll be there to meet us.” He keeps talking, asking Peter another question every so often. 

Peter tries to stay awake, it’s getting harder and harder. But every time he starts to drift away, Wade’s voice, urgent and scared, drags him back.

Then Wade is there, and he’s being bundled into the back seat of a cab. He hears Wade ordering pizza and talking to Dopinder about his girlfriend. Peter wants to tell Dopinder thank you, but his voice seems to have completely run out now. In fact, he can’t seem to keep his eyes open, and he’s having a hard time breathing. 

He doesn’t remember Wade fixing his shoulder. Everything after the cab pulls up in front of their apartment building is just flashes of things that don’t seem to fit together. All he remembers is Wade’s voice telling him he has to stay with Wade, he’s not allowed to leave. 

****

When he wakes up, he feels like his stomach has eaten itself, he’s so hungry. He’s in bed, one arm taped to his torso to keep his shoulder still. He awkwardly tries to sit up, it’s not so easy with only one arm available. Before he gets halfway up, Wade’s there.

“Hey baby boy! You’re awake. I bet you’re hungry.” He helps Peter sit up and swing his legs over to the floor.

“Starved.” Peter’s voice is rough, but he at least has enough breath to speak.

“Awesome. We have pancakes, pizza, and a ton of gatorade to get you rehydrated. Think you can make it to the table?”

Peter nods. “Feel a lot better.”

“Your healing kicked into high gear once we got the bleeding stopped. But I’m sure you’ve run through all your reserves.” Wade stands back and lets Peter make his own way to the table. (But Peter notices he stays within arms reach, just in case.)

Then Wade’s piling way too much food on the table and handing him an entire bottle of gatorade. “Drink it all.” He says when Peter protests he could just drink out of a cup. “You lost a lot of blood, and you need it.”

So Peter does. He knows Wade worries when he gets hurt, and there really isn’t anything else he can do. So he lets Wade feed him and reassure himself that Peter is here, that he didn’t leave, that he plans on staying. 


	18. Muffled Screams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wade isn't sure exactly when the number of people he cared about expanded beyond zero. But somewhere along the way it went from not caring if he died to realizing life was worth it as long as Spiderman, then Ellie, and now Miles are in it. He's still willing to die to save them, but he's not quite as willing to embrace death as he was.

Wade isn’t sure exactly when the number of people he cared about expanded beyond zero. But somewhere along the way it went from not caring if he died to realizing life was worth it as long as Spiderman, then Ellie, and now Miles are in it. He’s still willing to die to save them, but he’s not quite as willing to embrace death as he was.

The problem is, while he can’t stay dead, the same isn’t true of the others. And while he can insist on keeping Ellie safely protected almost every second of her life (he apparently cannot have her kept in a secure facility for her own protection as that is child abuse, Mr. Wilson), he can’t do the same for either Peter or Miles. So he does the best he can; he makes sure he patrols with them as much as he can. After seeing how much they both depend on instinct, he trains them in self defense as much as they’ll let him. And he does a lot of research and monitoring of the shady parts of the city to find out if they’re in danger before anyone actually comes after them.

Which is why, when Miles disappears with no warning, he goes into full paranoia mode. He sends Ellie to stay with Prentiss. Just in case. He tries to get Peter to move into the Avengers tower. Of course, Peter refuses. He’s not an Avenger, and he has some serious issues with how the Avengers run things, and he’s opposed to going to them for help. He says the cost is always too high.

So Wade hits up all his contacts and tries to find out what happened to Spidey Jr. But he’s coming up blank; no one has heard of any jobs out for Miles, and no one has any information on what happened when the kid disappeared.

Wade decides he needs to either get Peter to hack some city systems and find any images of what happened to Miles, or convince him they need to go to Stark for access to his computer system to find out. But Peter doesn’t show up for patrol. And he’s not at home. And just like Miles, he’s missing.

While Peter and Stark have an uncomfortable relationship, Wade and Stark have a hate-hate relationship. He knows there’s no way Stark will help him out. But he needs someone with technical skills. Unfortunately, his biggest expert is gone, now that Peter is missing. But Peter is friends with a couple of the high level scientists over at Pym Industries, and he’s pretty sure at least one of them knows he’s Spiderman. 

One very awkward conversation later (trying to find out if someone knows someone else’s secret identity without coming right out and asking is _hard_ ), Wade has a group of nerds searching through the city cameras for any image of either Spiderman or Spidey Jr. 

Two days later (Wade, there are thousands of cameras and we don’t know where they disappeared, so it’s going to take time) they finally have a lead. Wade barely waits to hear the details before he’s headed to the location, locked and loaded.

He’s a little nervous when he arrives, because it’s an enormous warehouse, but it’s empty. There’s no one. No sound. No equipment. Nothing. But it’s the last place the two were seen, and he has nowhere else to look, so he barges in and starts searching the whole place.

Nothing. Room after room after room of nothing.

But it’s clean. It’s not dirty or dusty or any of the things you would expect to see in a long-deserted warehouse. So someone’s been here, even if they aren’t there any longer.

He’s gone through every room. Twice. And there’s nothing. No clues, no indications that anyone has been here, except for the lack of dust and dirt.

Wade collapses next to the elevator, doors propped open, and leans his head against the wall, trying to think what he missed. Where he can look next. 

His eyes close in frustration, and he takes a deep breath, trying to convince himself not to just slam his head against the wall. Or put a bullet through his head. Him being dead will be that long that no one is looking for Peter and Miles. He needs to…

He freezes and tries to focus his hearing. He wishes he had Peter’s enhanced senses. Or the Spider Sense both of them seem to share. Something… just on the edge of his hearing.

He turns his head. It sounds a little louder in the elevator. A minute later and he’s got his ear pressed against the floor of the elevator. He can hear… something. A muffled screaming. He can hear it best on the floor of the elevator. He frowns. There aren’t any floors lower than this one. He checked all the staircases, and none went down. But… If this was Hydra (or really, any mad scientist), there might be a secret lower level lab that had a hidden entrance.

He checks the elevator controls. Nothing. No hidden panels in the walls.

He pops the access panel in the ceiling and climbs on top of the elevator, looking over the edge. The elevator opening goes far further than it should if he’s on the ground floor of the building. He sighs. He does not have time to figure out how to make the elevator go down. Instead, he grabs ahold of a cross brace on the wall, draws his Katana, and slashes through the cables.

The elevator doesn’t fall like a rock, like he’d hoped. Apparently it has some sort of built in emergency braking system. But even though it doesn’t fall fast, it does fall. He follows it down, more slowly, as he has to find hand and foot holds. (He could just drop, but again, any time he spends dead is time no one is searching for Peter and Miles.)

He eventually gets to the bottom. The elevator is below the door, but there is enough room for him to pry the doors open while perched on the elevator roof.

He doesn’t hear the scream anymore, but he’s pretty sure he’s where they came from. He’s at the bottom of the elevator chute. And there weren’t any other doors. This has got to be the secret lab.

He tries to pry the doors open as quietly as he can. Unfortunately, all the people he had expected to see in the empty floors above are down here. And he’s busy shooting and slicing the minute the doors open. He hopes Miles and Peter are going to be able to forgive him, he really doesn’t have the time or the space to not unalive everyone. He’s not trying to unalive, but he’s not trying too hard not too. He’s more worried about locating his boys before anyone else can make them scream.

He’s been in a lot of research labs. Today’s approach to high visibility and easy monitoring has never become popular with evil scientists. The hall he’s in is lined with doors with no signs or windows, and he has to open every door and enter every room to make sure the room is empty of arachnid themed heroes. He tries to knock out and incapacitate as much as possible; but he’s highly stressed, and that always makes his reaction time faster. And more deadly. So he’s not sure how good a job he’s doing.

At least, he’s pretty sure he’s in the right place. He’s been demanding what happened to the Spideys, and while no one will answer his questions, no one seems surprised at what he’s asking. And by now he’s used to the subtle difference between “I have no idea what you’re talking about” and “I’m not going to tell you.” So he keeps going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC tomorrow since I need to go to sleep. I only meant to write 750 words, I'm at 1300 something, and he hasn't even found our boys yet.


	19. Asphyxiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued from yesterday--Wade's searching for his boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from Muffled Scream (chapter 18), partly because the story just kept going, and partly because I spent too much time yesterday waiting on a tire repair–locally we're right in the middle of car repair season when they liberally salt the roads with random screws and nails. It's murder on tires.

Wade is on the last leg of the floor before he finally gets a sign beyond pretty shady responses to his entirely reasonable questions on where the Spiders are. He enters a large lab that has cells lining one wall that look like they’re intended to restrain enhanced strength victims. The walls look like metal bars, backed by a thick glass like material. Good for keeping something in and keeping it isolated. The only problem is, it’s not the Spiders. Three of the five cages are empty; the ones on either end have… well they look an awful lot like something out of Spidey’s rogues’ gallery. The look like literal Spidermen. Just crossed with different spiders. 

The one on the left looks like he’s crossed with a widow spider. His head looks almost human (except for the terrified and half mad look on it), but it’s fused to a sternum with no neck, and there are eight limbs attached, four on either side of his sternum. Two of them have hand-like endings while the rest just end… His abdomen is enormous, smooth and glossy. (And yes, he knows the parts. Apparently, if you call Spider-man bug boy one too many times, you suddenly are forced to watch all the nature shows on spiders that exist.)

The one on the right looks like he’s crossed with a wolf spider, or maybe a tarantula. His body is furry, though the “fur” looks spiky and rough. His abdomen is smaller, and his sternum is much bigger. His legs are thicker and stronger looking than the first, who has thin long legs.

Both species, Wade knows, are venomous. Though wolf spiders and tarantulas rarely pose much of a risk to humans. But both are usually smaller than your hand. Not the size of a full-grown human. These might go way beyond painful to instantly deadly. 

But even so, he’s pretty sure these aren’t the result of any experimentation on his boys. This looks like some gene splicing gone wrong. 

There aren’t, however, any scientists in this lab to interrogate, and one look at the faces of the two locked up… experiments… convinces him they aren’t going to be any help. In fact, they both look like they just want to be put out of their misery. He’ll be back for them. But right now, he has to find the Spiders before they end up like this.

The next door is locked, with a keypad mounted on the door frame. He doesn’t dare shoot out the lock, he can’t tell how big the room is or what’s in in. He presses his ear against the door, but doesn’t hear anything. Sighing, he glares at the lock. Well, he’s gonna go with what he knows. People invest a lot in locks, they don’t spend much on what they’re attached to. Nice steel door with elaborate lock, but the walls are still wood and drywall. 

It takes more kicks than he’ll admit to, but he rips the deadbolt out of the frame and forces the door in. (If that failed, his next try was to just chop a new door right through the wall. Much easier with an axe, but he has a machete strapped to his leg that’ll work in a pinch…)

Wade freezes the minute he shoves through the door and sees what’s inside. There’s Miles, strapped to a table with way too many needles and wires attached to him. He’s awake, but looks drugged. Wade looks at what’s running into and out of the boy, and makes the executive decision to just disconnect everything. He wants to grab handfuls and yanks, but he doesn’t want to hurt the boy. So he gently slides each needle out and pulls off each wire carefully. A few of the needles leave dripping blood, and he looks around frantically. Nothing in the room looks like it’s going to help; he pulls out the spiderman bandaids he keeps just to annoy Peter and uses them with a piece of gauze to cover those spots. 

Miles just watches him blearily while he works, making Wade more and more nervous. Once he has everything disconnected, he helps the boy sit up and looks him over for any other injuries. He’s dressed in just a pair of briefs, and he’s got to be cold. He seems a little more alert; probably starting to burn off whatever they were pumping into him.

“Hey kiddo, how are you feeling?” He asks.

“Dizzy.” Miles answers. “Cold.”

“Yeah, think you can walk? I still have to find Peter, but I don’t want to leave you here if I don’t have to.”

Miles tries to climb off the table, and Wade helps him. He must have something of a healing factor because he’s a lot more steady than he was even when Wade helped him sit up. There aren’t too many more doors to go, so Wade’s pretty sure they’ll find Peter soon. As they’re leaving the room, he notices a lab coat hanging on the back of the door he knocked in. It’s better than nothing, so he grabs it and drops it over Mile’s shoulders. “Here. This should at least keep a little heat in.”

Miles pulls it on awkwardly and follows Wade, grabbing periodically at Wade’s belt.

Wade stops just inside the door. “Okay, don’t get upset, but there are a lot of unconscious and possible unalive bodies out here. Don’t panic, just stay close to me.”

Miles nods. “Peter’s going to be mad though.” He mumbles out.

“I can live with that, as long as Peter is alive to be mad.” Wade says.

He steps into the hall, checking both directions before heading towards the last two doors. The first one is unlocked, and the room is empty. That just leaves one. He leaves the door open and strides to the last one. He’s sure Peter’s in there, but part of him panics, wondering what they’re going to do if he’s not.

The last door is locked. That’s a good sign, right? They had Miles locked up, makes sense they’d have Peter locked up.

He backs up, ready to kick the door in, when Miles grabs his arm. “Wait a minute… Can I try something? Peter’s been helping me with it.”

Wade looks at the boy in surprise, not sure what he has in mind. But a few seconds can’t hurt, so he waves the kid towards the door.

Miles walks (staggers) up to the door and slaps his hand against the display screen and keypad. There’s a snap, the smell of burning plastic, and the sound of the deadbolt pulling back.

Miles looks at him and grins. Wade grins back and motions for the boy to step away from the door. Miles nods and moves. Then Wade grabs and shoves the door open.

Good news, they’ve found Peter. Bad news, he’s inside of some plastic cylinder. The air in there is rapidly turning an odd yellowish color, and Peter’s gasping for breath. Oh. And there’s two mad scientist types in there. Wade’s got his pistol out and pointed, trigger nearly depressed.

“Get him out.” He snaps.

Mad scientist number one just laughs. “You shoot me, and I won’t show you how to save him. You shoot the tube, and we all die from the poison.”

Mad scientist number two seems a little less mad and seems to be the kind to run rather than monologue. Wade shoots him in the leg to make sure he can’t get far, then turns back to number one.

Wade debates what to do. Well, scientist one probably won’t help. Things will go much better without him. He grabs a knife with one hand and throws it at one, hitting him between the eyes with the hilt and knocking him out. “Miles, need your super brain in here. Help me reverse whatever they did to Peter.”

Miles is clearly feeling better, he manages to walk straight to the console and starts reading labels and buttons. Wade examines every inch of the tube Peter’s trapped in. He’s not sure it’s actually poison, there aren’t any gas masks in the room which seem like they’d be required if they were using poison gas. But it’s clearly not something Peter can breathe; he’s gasping worse, and his lips are turning blue. 

There’s a tube running into the cylinder that’s clearly pumping the gas in. Wade can cut through it, but that would be the same as just breaking the cylinder. Whatever is in it would just fill the room. Which wouldn’t save Peter, and might also kill Miles.

He growls in frustration and slams one fist into the wall.

“Think I got it.” Miles says. There’s a click, and the gas stops moving in the tube. 

“Any idea what this shit is?” Wade growls. He turns to scientist two. “If I break that tube, are you going to die?”

The terrified man shakes his head.

That’s all he needs. “Miles, just in case, hold your breath.” He orders.

Miles looks up and nods, then takes a deep breath and holds it.

Wade smashes the cylinder above Peter’s head with his Katana. The wall shatters in a spiderweb of cracks, and a hissing sounds as the yellow mist seeps out rapidly. Wade turns his weapon and slams the hilt into the center of the cracks, and the mist pours out. It’s lighter than air and drifts up to the ceiling.

“Here,” Miles croaks, crawling past Wade. He slaps his hand against the bottom of the tube. There’s another snap and that same smell of burnt plastic, and a panel of the cylinder pops open, spilling Peter out onto the floor. 

Wade grabs the man and drags him into the hall, Miles crawling after the two of them. Not sure it will help, Wade slams the door closed, hoping it’ll keep as much of the mist in that room as possible.

“He’s not breathing.” Miles reports.

Wade hurries back. “CPR.” He hauls the man over on to his back. Airway…. He pulls the man’s mouth open. No obstructions. Breathing. Yep, no breathing. No problem. Wade can help with that if need be. He’s alternating rescue breaths and chest compressions when he feels Peter jerk. Wade sits up and rolls Peter onto his side. The man’s coughing and choking, but he’s breathing.

“Is he okay?” Miles asks quietly.

Wade nods. “I think so. May have some fallout from whatever that shit was. But I think he’s okay.” He pulls out his phone. “But we’re calling in a clean-up crew for this place.”

“Shield?” Miles asks.

Wade shakes his head. “No. Not sure what they have on the two of you, and I’m not risking Squinty getting anything on either of you. I’m calling in my own team. I want it sterilized.”

Miles nods. “What about the people?”

Wade looks between the two Spiders., then sighs deeply. “All right. I’ll have them stripped and searched and dumped at Shield. That okay?”

Miles pats him on the shoulder. “Yeah. That’s good.”

Wade makes his phone calls, one hand repeatedly checking that Miles and Peter are still there. Then he shoves his phone back in his pocket. “Okay, let’s get you both back home.” 

Miles stands up and pulls the lab coat tighter around his body. “Sounds good. How are we going to get Peter out?”

Wade looks down, Peter’s breathing, but barely conscious. Wade scoops him up. “He’s carried me more than once, he can put up with me carrying him this time. Keep your eyes open for another lab coat. I really don’t want to haul him through New York City just in boxers.”

Miles snickers and grabs onto Wade’s belt. Wade glances down at the grip, and decides it’s not worth mentioning. 

They check out the rooms on their way back to the elevator and manage to find another lab coat for Peter. But Wade doesn’t want to take the time to hunt for the Spider suits; he called Logan to head up the cleanup, and he knows the man will search and recover anything he can. 

When they do make it to the elevator, he wants to kick himself for cutting the cables. Now he’s going to have to get both his fat ass and two woozy side kicks up several floors using just his grappling hook. Well, it’s not like he’s never had to do something like it before.

Miles helps him tie Peter’s arms together over his shoulders, but says he’s strong and awake enough to get up the cable himself. Wade nods, but insists the boy go first.

The trip up is just as fun as you’d expect. Miles is part spider, but right now he’s a slightly drunk spider and he’s more than a little shaky on his climb. But while he does keep Wade nervous the whole way up, he makes it up and over the edge into the warehouse. 

Wade gets to the top and hauls himself up and over the edge after the boy. The two of them lie there for a few minutes, catching their breath. He’s hauling himself to his feet when he hears footsteps on the concrete floor. He’s on his feet, gun in one hand and katana in the other before he realizes its Logan.

Logan just grunts at him. “They okay?”

Wade lowers his weapons. “Peter’s still out. Miles seems to be doing better.”

Miles is on his feet, too, and Wade’s amused to find his hand is clamped on Wades belt again.

“Hey Bub.” Logan says. “Anything we should watch out for while we’re in there?”

Miles looks up at Wade, then looks at Logan and shakes his head.

“Destroy any samples or records.” Wade says. “And there are a couple of experiments. Look like spider human crosses. I don’t know if they can be saved, but I know you guys’ll try.”

Logan nods. 

“And watch out for their gear.” Wade says. 

“Will do. We’ll check in when we’re done. Need a lift home? Or some medical attention?” 

Wade looks at Miles, he’s looking really exhausted. And Peter still hasn’t really come to.

“Yes, to both, I think.” Wade sighs. “Provided we can keep it discreet.”

Logan glares at him. “Why do you think I’m the only one in here? I can take you home, and Professor X can meet us there.”

Wade nods. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

The trip home goes a lot better than Wade expected; in fact, Peter starts to wake up on the way and is talking by the time they’re in Wade’s apartment. Professor X looks over both the Spiders and assures Wade they’ll be fine with a little sleep and food. So he gets them fed, orders more groceries, and gets them both into bed.

And promptly decides he needs to up his training of both the Spiders. And maybe talk to Weasel about some sort of trackers or communication devices like James Bond uses. He’s still not sure when he went from not caring if he died to having so many people in his life, but what he does know is that no one is going to hurt any of them. Not if he has anything to say about it.


	20. Trembling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trem·bling
> 
> /ˈtrembliNG/
> 
> _adjective_
> 
> adjective: **trembling**
> 
> 1\. shaking or quivering, typically as a result of anxiety, excitement, or frailty.
> 
> Spider-Man's not really at taking care of himself. But this is the first time Deadpool's found the hero in a full-blown panic attack.

trem·bling

/ˈtrembliNG/

_adjective_

adjective: **trembling**

1\. shaking or quivering, typically as a result of anxiety, excitement, or frailty.

Deadpool has known Spider-man for years. He had been impressed with Spider-man for even longer, but when he actually met the hero and he was actually polite to Deadpool, he quickly moved into position as Deadpool’s favorite hero. Then, when he started letting Wade patrol with him, he moved to being Deadpool’s friend. He’s just so good, it would be impossible not to be crazy about him.

One thing Spider-man is _not_ good at, however, is taking care of himself. Tonight is not the first time Deadpool’s found him trying to patrol while trembling from exhaustion, or so wired on caffeine he can’t sit still. But this is the first time he’s found the hero in a full-blown panic attack.

They were fighting some weird villain who wore a fish bowl on his head and called himself something like Mysterium. Apparently he had the power to control people’s thoughts. Deadpool wasn’t bothered too much by him; having two colored boxes living, and sometimes screaming, gives you quite an immunity to intrusive thoughts trying to scare you. In fact, all that happened was Yellow starting a one up contest by taking all the suggestions and making them worse. White decided to just pick apart the plot points of all the images. Deadpool let them have their fun; it kept them from focussing on him for a change.

But Spider-man was having a harder time. The man had him chasing his tail trying to rescue people that weren’t there and living through visions that from the look of them were absolutely terrifying.

Deadpool took advantage of the man’s focus on Spider-man and smashed him over the head with the hilt of his katana, breaking the stupid fish bowl and knocking the man out. 

Spider-man was curled up in a ball against the wall and didn’t even notice when Deadpool came over and shook his shoulder. Not sure what else to do, Deadpool pulled out some plastic cable ties and hogtied the man, then just to be safe, tied him to a pole sunk into the concrete. Then he pulled out his phone and started to call the police. Glancing over at Spider-man, he changed his mind and called Fury instead and let him know where they’d left the villain. Fury wanted him to stay on site until his team arrived, but he refused. “Sorry Patches, Spidey’s in bad shape and I need to get him to help.”

“Wilson, we have a complete medical facility here. There’s nowhere you can take him with better care.” Fury snapped.

“Sorry Squinty. He’s in no condition to okay that, and based on what he’s said in the past, he doesn’t want your team that close to his bits.” 

When Fury growled back and started to protest, Deadpool just hung up. He’d had this conversation more than once with Spider-man, and he knew he’d turn down hospitals, Shield facilities, and even the medical level in the Avengers tower. That meant Wade’s apartment and first aid kit. Granted, his first aid kit had been seriously upgraded since he started hanging around with Spider-man. He could now treat anything short of open heart surgery. And if it came to that, he could find someone to take them in, no questions asked.

First step, though, was getting Spider-man back to his place. Looking at the hero still curled up, he decided he needed transportation. He called for a cab, telling it to pick him up a block away to make sure they were gone before Shield arrived, then scooped up Spider-man and headed off to the pickup point.

Spider-man just lay trembling and whimpering in his arms, too locked in his head to respond. Deadpool decided if the man hadn’t started to come around by the time he got back to his apartment, he’d call around for advice. Someone had to have tangled with Mr Fishbowl before.

Wade made it to the crossroads where he’d directed the cab just before the cab, which was good. Though, as always, he was amazed at how much New Yorkers just ignored. A grown ass man being carried by another grown ass man, both dressed in far too much spandex, didn’t even get a second glance from most people. The only reaction he got was from two older women he was pretty sure were tourists visiting the big city for the first time. And all they did was stare as he passed by him. One even smiled and waved. 

The trip to his apartment was uneventful. Spider-man didn’t respond, and Deadpool was getting a bit concerned.

After settling Spider-man on his couch, he started making phone calls. He called Bruce Banner first, because of the avengers, he was the most reasonable to talk to. After explaining who and what had happened, Banner told him they hadn’t run across anyone with Fishbowls on their head, and that the mind control sounded more like a Dr. Strange or Professor X’s realm of expertise. Deadpool thanked him and hung up. Then frowned. He really didn’t want to talk to either of them, but at least with the Prof he’d be dealing mostly with go-betweens. 

He dialed quickly, before he got too tense about it. A random student answered the phone, and passed him off to Logan, who got the details and said the Prof would be in touch. 

Deadpool sighed and hung up, wondering if there was anything he could do for Spider-man while they waited. Sighing, he decided the only thing he could do was make him some food. Maybe the smell of tacos would rouse the hero enough to eat something.

He’d almost finished the takes, and the apartment was filling with the scent of spicy meat and seasoned beans, when the phone rang again.

“Hello.” He answered, holding the phone to his ear while he stirred the beans with one hand.

“Wade,” the Professor’s voice answered. “How is your friend doing?”

Deadpool glanced over at the couch where he’d left Spider-man. He was curled around his knees with his face buried in his arms. “About the same. Doesn’t respond to anything I say. Started cooking, thought maybe the smell would get to him.”

“Good idea. But unfortunately, he’s going to need a little push. I can’t do it from here. Do I have your permission to come there?” 

Deadpool sighed. “I don’t know. He’s in no condition to agree to having someone poking around in his head. And you know how he is about his identity.”

“Hmmm.” The professor paused. “How about if I promise you that I will go nowhere or look at anything, I’ll just do what I need to do to pull him out of the loop he’s stuck in?”

Deadpool closed his eyes. “What if we don’t do anything?” 

“Wade, it’s very likely he’ll never snap out of this without a little push. He’s fallen into a self-perpetuating spiral. It won’t take much to pull him out, but I’m afraid he’ll just starve or die of thirst if we don’t do something. Are you able to get him to eat or drink?”

Deadpool shook his head. “No. Okay. Come over. But you promise to look at or listen to or whatever it is you do to only what you absolutely have to. No poking and prodding.”

“I promise Wade. We’ll take the jet. We should be there within the hour.”

“Okay.” Deadpool sighed.

“And Wade,” the Professor added, “keep talking to him. He can hear some of what you’re saying. And regardless of what you think, he considers you a friend.”

“No poking and prodding of me either.” Deadpool snapped.

“That didn’t take any of my abilities to know,” the professor reproached. “It just takes knowing you. And I have met Spider-man before. It’s very clear he considers you a friend.”

Deadpool snorted and hung up. Then finished up the food, putting it in the oven to stay warm while they waited. He put the TV on and sat down next to Spider-man. He decided to just pretend it was a typical movie night. 

He did his best, but he hadn’t realized just how much a part Spider-man really took in their conversations until the other was practically catatonic. By the time the professor knocked on his door, he was running on fumes.

He scrambled off the couch and opened the door, letting the Professor in.

“Good evening, Wade.” The man said, rolling into the room and as close as he could get to the couch. “I may need you to move this table.”

“Of course.” Deadpool hurried over and grabbed the table, moving it against a wall so the Professor could reach Spider-man’s head. 

The professor placed a hand on Spider-man’s head, then closed his eyes in concentration. Under his hand, Spider-man slowly relaxed, then completely collapsed onto the couch.

The Professor opened his eyes, removed his hand, and smiled at Deadpool. “There. He’s just asleep now. It may be awhile before he wakes up, but he should be fine.”

Deadpool looked at the sleeping hero. “That’s it? He’ll be fine? He won’t wake up still trapped?”

The Professor shook his head. “No, he was stuck in a nightmare. I just showed him the way out. His mind is exhausted right now, which is why he’s sleeping. With his healing, he should be fine when he wakes up. Though probably very hungry.” He clapped his hands together. “Well. I hope you won’t consider me rude, but I have a school to run and must get back.”

Deadpool held up both hands. “Of course not. I’m just glad you could come to help him. If it happens again, is there anything I can do?”

The Professor frowned. “I’ll look into defenses for him. The attacks didn’t hurt you?”

Deadpool shrugged. “He tried, but the voices just made fun of everything he sent in my head.”

The Professor nodded thoughtfully. “That may be the key. I promise I will do some research into this and get back to both of you. We can’t have our heroes dropping into nightmares with no way to get out.”

“Thanks.” Deadpool said. 

“You’re a good friend, Wade. Don’t forget it.” And the Professor wheeled himself out of the apartment.

It took Spider-man half an hour to wake up, but he eventually did, groggy and more than a little disoriented.

Deadpool explained to him what had happened. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I called Professor X. He promised he wouldn’t look at anything in your head, though, and he just pulled you out of your nightmare. I understand if I really overstepped my place, and if you want me out of your life...”

“Wade.” Spider-man interrupted him. “Calm down. It’s okay. You did the right thing. I was trying so hard to get out of there, but I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. He got me out, and I’m fine now.”

“He said he’d try to come up with a defense for you, for the future.” Deadpool added, rather stunned at the hero’s response. “He said something about the voices in my head might be able to be used.” He shrugged, “Not sure how, but you and him are both smart and can probably find something.”

Spider-man yawned. “So, how do you feel about pizza? Or tacos? I’m starving.”

Deadpool grinned. “Well then, have I got the thing for you. Made dinner while you were out.” And he rushed off to server up dinner.


	21. Laced Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter Parker goes undercover to find a group drugging, raping, and robbing club goers. This will be continued tomorrow. Over 2000 words and barely got going on the plot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for discussion of rape and drugging. Nothing explicit, but if this is something that makes you uncomfortable, please don't read.

Peter Parker was not the kind to hang out in clubs or raves. For one thing, the times most people go conflicted with the time he spent as his alter ego. For another, the noise and smells and sights were just a bit too much for his enhanced sense to deal with. But, here he was, in the trendiest club, wearing skinny jeans and a bright tee-shirt, trying to act like he belonged. He figured he was failing miserably, but as Wade said, that was actually better. He needed to look like a victim, not someone who was really comfortable here.

It started two weeks ago, when Daredevil interrupted their patrol. Since Daredevil rarely left his neighborhood, Spider-man had immediately changed directions when he saw the devil standing on the roof.

“What’s up?” Deadpool asked, since the change in direction was a bit of a jerk in their usual smooth progress.

“Daredevil.” Spider-man answered. “Figured we better find out why he’s out of his territory.”

“Hmmm.” Deadpool hummed. “That is odd. Something must be up.”

Spider-man swung the two of them onto the roof. 

“Hey Horny.” Deadpool called. “What’s happening?” He dropped off Spider-man’s back and walked toward Daredevil. “Feeling like joining Team Red?”

Daredevil laughed. “Naw, I join you two and I’d never get a word in edgewise. I’ll stick to patrolling alone.”

Spider-man laughed. “Does that mean you talk to yourself while you patrol?”

“Could be Spidey. Could be.” Daredevil replied. “But I’m here about something else, not applying for your boyband.”

“Too bad,” Deadpool said. “We are the coolest.”

Daredevil snorted. “I’ll suffer with the second coolest, I guess.”

“Got something outside your territory?” Spider-man asked, knowing if he didn’t redirect the conversation Deadpool would start singing in a few minutes.

“Yeah. Been a few really suspicious rape/robberies. Seem to start at clubs. The victim takes the perps home with them, then the following morning they wake up with no memory, raped and robbed. Creepy thing is that there’s nothing to track. The cameras don’t have any images of the perps, they pick introverts and people who are at the club alone, or who are just with acquaintances, so no one really notices when they leave or who they leave with.” Daredevil’s voice is serious as he details the crimes. “It’s outside my area, only reason I heard about it is one of Karen’s friends warned her about it and she passed it on. Figured I’d spread the word to the rest of the heroes and maybe someone can find something out and stop it.”

“Thanks.” Spider-man said. “Any idea what clubs are involved?”

“A few in your neighborhood,” Daredevil replied. “I had Foggy send you my notes, just in case.”

Deadpool grunted. “I’ll contact Weasel. Find out what he knows. Sounds like more than just crimes of opportunity if there’s nothing on camera. Might be pros branching out into a new area.”

Daredevil nodded. “That’s the impression I got. They seem to know who to target, and there has to be more than one involved. In a few of the cases they actually made off with quite a lot. Not just a grab and dash. Well, let me know if you find anything out, but I have to head back. “

“Thanks.” Spider-man repeated. “And let us know if you find out anything else.”

Daredevil nodded and walked off.

“Well,” Spider-man said. “Maybe we should change up our route for the near future.” 

Deadpool nodded. “Makes sense to try and stay closer to the clubs. Maybe we’ll see something. Why don’t you drop me off and I’ll talk to Weasel and see what he can find.”

Spider-man nodded. “Yeah. He can get info I can’t. Some people really don’t trust a friendly neighborhood Spider-man.”

Deadpool laughed. “Comes of being such a goody two shoes baby boy. They know you’re not going to overlook law bending and breaking.”

Spider-man groaned. “I can ignore a lot of things.”

“Right baby boy. You are a true Boy Scout and they know it. No worries. I’m not a hero, so I’ll go liaise for you.”

*****

An entire week of research turned up victims, but not much else. They’ve got lists of what was stolen, and the thieves had to have come prepared. They were able to get into safes, steal art, and leave the victim with no memory of any of it. 

Peter’s sitting on Wade’s couch, staring at the wall they’d put together with all the info they had. 

“How are they finding these people?” He asked, slumped agains the arm of the couch. “They know too much for them just to be bumping into the victims in the club.”

“Dunno kiddo. Weasel’s been doing a deep dive into their social media to see if there’s anything in common there.”

“Do I want to know?” Peter asked drily.

“Don’t worry! He’s just friending them on Facebook. Scouts honor!” Wade held up three fingers.

Peter snorted. “You weren’t a Boy Scout. But I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what Weasel’s up to.”

Wade shrugged. “Ehh, true. But it may be the only way to find out what’s going on.”

“I guess. Anything so far?” 

“Seems they all were on the same dating site.” Wade said. “And all of them had arranged to meet with someone at a club the night of the attack. All of them claim the person never showed, which is why the police didn’t find a pattern. Also, all of them were given a different picture of who they were meeting. Weasel also says all of them had pretty detailed coverage of their lives on Social Media. The kind that post pictures of their meals and check in everywhere they go. Would have made targeting them easy.”

Peter looked at him. “So we need to go undercover.”

“Whoa, baby boy, I really don’t think that’s a good idea” Wade protested. “That’s a lot more dangerous than I’m comfortable with. Not to mention, neither one of us has the type of apartment that would be of interest to this crowd.”

Peter frowned. “But we could.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Either you can rent something we can set up, or I can see if Johnny can loan us something. He’s got a couple apartments in town he uses when he’s hiding from the public.”

Wade sighed. “I could have Weasel help us set up a profile online, but the problem is that I’m seriously recognizable, even if the location works.”

Peter shook his head. “Not you, me. I can have MJ help me with the clothes so I look the part. I can claim to just have moved here and not know anyone in the city yet, to explain the dating app. Then if they take the bait, you follow us home and we catch the whole crew in the act.”

****

It took two days to convince Wade to go along with the plan, and the only reason he agreed is that Reed Richards promised to put cameras and audio trackers in the apartment they borrowed from Johnny, and because Peter agreed to have trackers on both his phone and on himself. He even agreed to have one injected (though he insisted Wade was going completely overboard on that one.)

Weasel set up a detailed history for ‘Jim Jackson’ that made Peter look like some sort of self centered financial genius who had graduated to the Big Apple recently and left everything behind to move to Manhattan. MJ and Johnny completely overhauled Peter’s look, taking away all his snarky tee-shirts and ripped jeans, and replacing them with skinny jeans and more stylish shirts. Peter hated every second of it. Wade just laughed, especially when MJ gave him lessons on keeping his hair stylishly tousled. Peter grumbled that it looked just like it used to, but now was tacky with all the product she made him use. MJ pointed out that while his hair normally started like that, by lunch time it looked more like a birds nest.

MJ and Johnny didn’t even let him _touch_ the profile on the dating app, knowing he’d just make jokes and act sarcastic.

But the end result was this: Peter Parker standing in a popular club, holding a drink, and hoping he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt. He was having serious second thoughts about the whole process; he decided being undercover really wasn’t for him. And okay, being Spider-man was sort of being undercover, but it wasn’t really because Spider-man was _him_ , just a more extreme version of him. This ‘Jim’ persona was everything he wasn’t. 

He was meeting up with someone he’d been talking to on the dating app (well, who MJ and Johnny had been talking to. He just saw the conversations after the fact.) Randy was (supposedly) a long time New Yorker who was a rising star on Wall Street. He wanted to meet and show Jim around the Big Apple and had suggested they meet at a club, so Jim would feel safer, in a public space with lots of other people around.

Wade was here somewhere, and Weasel was tracking his location. And, if this was the right crew, they knew they’d end up back at the apartment they’d borrowed from Johnny. So, everything was going according to plan. 

But Peter was near panicking. His Spider Sense was a constant low level buzz, and he was trying to ignore the headache he was developing from the constant assault on his senses from everything about the club. Flashing lights, loud noises, too many different smells. (Why did so many people feel the need to absolutely douse themselves in crappy cologne?) Peter was doing his best to keep a smile on his face and watch out for the person he was supposed to meet. So far, he’d seen nothing.

“Jim?” A voice came from behind him, and a hand touched his shoulder. 

Peter spun around. His senses were so off he hadn’t even noticed someone walking up to him.

“Hi! I’m Randy.” The person in front of him smiled and held out a hand. “You are Jim, right? You’re much cuter in person.”

Peter smiled back, glad for a change that the club was loud. There was no way he was going to be expected to carry on much of a conversation in here, and with how nervous he was, he was sure he wasn’t going to convince anyone he was Jim. 

He let Randy settle them at a table and buy him a drink. He’d argued with Wade about the drink; Wade wanted him to refuse to let Randy give him anything. But he pointed out that they couldn’t make the man suspicious, and if he was there on a date he’d hardly refuse a drink. 

He finished the drink with no impact, and Randy was happy just to talk and drink with ‘Jim,’ and didn’t even suggest that they leave. Peter started to think they had the wrong man, and was debating claiming he had to get home for an early day, when a group of people walked up and introduced themselves as a friends of Randy’s. Peter was more than overwhelmed with so many people around him. But, he decided to just go with it; after all they did know there had to be more than one person involved.

He had another drink and talked to whoever was sitting next to him, or just nodded his head and pretended he was following what was going on. His headache was no longer just threatening, it was pounding between his eyes. His senses had been so overwhelmed, they were starting to shut down. It kind of felt like he was inside a fishbowl; everything was distant and far away. And he was having a hard time thinking. He was really regretting being here. His enhanced senses clearly were not meant for clubbing. If this turned out to be a no-go, he was going to talk to Mr. Richards about something to dampen them before he went back to any other clubs. And on top of everything else, he was starting to feel a little nauseous and dizzy.

“Hey, Jim, you doing okay man?” Randy asked. “You’re looking a little worse for wear.”

Peter smiled. “Sorry, just more tired than I expected. Moving, new job…” He looked down. “Might need to head home and get some sleep. Maybe we can try again another night?”

Randy nodded. “That’d be great. Want me to see you home?”

Peter shook his head. “Naw. I’ll grab a cab. Talk to you tomorrow?”

Randy clapped him on the shoulder, then slid out to let Peter get up.

Peter smiled back and slid out of the booth and stood up. And promptly stumbled, grabbing the table and nearly knocking over the pitcher.

“Whoa, hold on.” Randy laughed and steadied Peter. “On second thought, I’m going to insist on seeing you home. Looks like you had a bit more than your exhausted self can handle.” 

Peter smiled weakly. “I guess so. Didn’t think I had that much.”

Randy grinned and put an arm around him. “Exhaustion amps everything up, you know. Let’s just get you back home and you can sleep it off.”

Peter nodded and let the man lead him out of the club and into a cab. Peter started to give his address, then frowned realizing he’d started to give _Peter’s_ address, not Jim’s. 

Randy just laughed and gave Jim’s address to the drive. When the driver looked confused, Randy just said “Jim just moved here from Chicago. After a few beers he just got confused; we really don’t want the fare to Chi Town.”

The cabbie nodded and drove off. Peter just felt relieved that he hadn’t given himself away; good thing they’d claimed he just moved here. 

He really wanted to just get home and sleep. In fact, he was having a hard time not slumping over onto Randy. He just wanted to put his head down and close his eyes. Maybe for just a few minutes…

****TBC tomorrow. I did it again. Over 2000 words and I didn’t even get them to the apartment yet. On the one hand, I guess that means the free writing is working. On the other, why can’t I write a scene without it developing a plot and details and….


	22. Hallucination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued from previous chapter, Laced Drink. Peter is undercover to find a group that drugs the drinks of their victims before robbing and raping them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings for rape (mentioned) and drugging.

Wade was not happy with this. Peter had a hard time seeing bad in anyone. Case in point, the kid was not only friends with, he was actually dating a mercenary. But the point still stands. If he could see good in Wade, Peter would see good in _anyone_.

He also really didn’t like hiding out in the back of the club while Peter stood around acting as bait for who knew how many rapist robbers. He was just glad Johnny had used his connections to get him cover acting as a bouncer for the evening; there was no way he’d be allowed in tonight otherwise. As a bouncer he was just expected to glower at everyone and look intimidating. He had a gizmo from Richards that changed his face so no one recognized Deadpool, but it didn’t do much to hide his muscles. Fortunately, this place apparently believed bigger was better when it came to bouncers, and he wasn’t even the biggest guy here. 

Keeping an eye on Peter wasn’t too difficult. The kid really was awkward when he was trying to be social, and he had clearly never taken any acting classes. On the other hand, dressed the way he was, not too many people were looking beyond his ass. Wade grinned to himself. Maybe he could talk Peter into keeping a few pairs of those jeans the dynamic duo had dressed him in.

He watched as someone looking like the photo he’d gotten walked up and started flirting with him. Must be Randy. 

Randy took no time buying him a drink. Wade didn’t see any sign that Randy had messed with the drink, but he was still not happy with Peter’s taking it. They had no idea what was being used to drug the victims. And if it was keeping unenhanced victims out all night, it could still have a nasty impact on Peter. He really wished they’d agreed to let Deadpool play the victim; his healing wouldn’t let anything keep him down or out for more than a few minutes. And, unlike Peter, he could act. He sighed and looked for Johnny’s friend who worked here. The woman was working in the right section of the club, so he made his way over to her and pointed out the table where Peter and Randy were, asking her to try to collect anything Peter drank out of. She nodded and went back to her rounds.

The crowd that arrived later put Wade on high alert. Were they going to rush Peter out with several people? That didn’t seem likely. None of the other victims left in a crowd. But then Peter got up and staggered against the table, knocking over drinks and nearly dumping the pitcher. Johnny’s friend was passing by, and caught the pitcher before it fell, immediately cleaning up and grabbing some glasses. Wade noted she grabbed the one from where Peter had been sitting. At least they’d get an analysis of what they gave Peter, and Peter was clearly drugged. 

Wade followed the two out; Randy was half leading and half holding Peter up, guiding him out of the club and then into a cab.

Wade immediately grabbed another cab, directed the driver to head to ‘Jim’s’ apartment, and called Reed Richards. “One of the waitresses has a sample of what he was drinking. The guy he met took him out to a cab and they’re heading towards the apartment.” He reported. “In a cab following them.”

“Got it. We’ll let you know as soon as we have the results.”

Wade hung up and stared out the window. He was feeling a little more confident about this mission. Peter might end up hungover, but the apartment was just a sham, so nothing could be stolen, and Wade would be there before they could hurt Peter.

They had nearly reached the apartment building where ‘Jim’ lived, when Richards called back. “Yo. What did you find?”

“Nothing.” Richards answered. “Whatever they’re doing, it’s not being given in the drinks. Or this is the wrong gang.”

“No. So far, this happened to all the others. Maybe they’re injecting it. Or aerosol?” Wade asked.

“Theoretically possible, but aerosol would be hard to administer, and injections would be tough to do without being noticed.” Richards answered. “We’re going to need a blood sample to find out what he’s on, and to get the proof. Or you’re going to have to catch them in the act.”

Wade groaned. “No way am I letting them lay a hand on Peter.”

Richards grunted. “Well, it might be enough if more than one person shows up.”

Wade dropped his head back against the seat. “I can’t leave him alone with even one of them. You didn’t see how bad he looked when they were leaving. He could barely walk. There’s no way he can protect himself.”

“Wade, we’ll have eyes on him. You get close, we’ll let you know if you need to break the door down.” Richards replied. “You think Johnny’s gonna let anything happen to Peter?”

Wade sighed. “Okay. But I’m trusting you to let me know the second it looks like it might go bad. Not when it goes bad, when it looks like it might.”

“Got it. Just got a report from the team at the club. That crowd that was there is gone.”

“Okay. So it looks like this is the group.” Wade said. “I’m here. On my way in.”

Johnny had given Peter access to his apartment for the mission, and had borrowed the apartment next door for them to monitor and tape. Wade let himself into the monitoring apartment and found Johnny and Richards running several computers. An entire wall of monitors showed feeds from every room next door.

“They’re in.” Johnny announced when Wade walked up.

Looking up, Wade saw that Randy was leading Peter over to the couch and sitting him down. Peter was walking straighter than he had when Wade had seen him get into the cab, so maybe his healing factor was burning through whatever he was on.

“Looks like whatever they gave him is wearing off.” Wade said. “When he left, he was staggering.”

Randy said something to Peter, and he smiled and answered the man.

“Is there audio?” Wade asked. 

“Yeah.” Johnny said, tossing him an earpiece. “Here.”

Wade put the earpiece in.

_Randy: “Well, Jim, so where’s the safe.”_

_Peter: “Wade, you know I don’t have a safe. I just keep the important stuff in the freezer. That way, if there’s a fire it’ll survive.”_

“Why’s he calling him Wade?” Wade asked.

Johnny shook his head. “Don’t know.”

_Peter stood up and put his arms around Randy, hugging him and whining. “Wade, let’s go to bed. I’m too tired to go out tonight.”_

_“Wade, hunh.” Randy murmured. Then louder, “sure, just hold on. Remember, our friends are coming over.”_

_Peter frowned. “Who’s coming over? It’s late.”_

_“You tell me who’s coming over. You know how I always forget things.”_

_Peter shrugged. “Matt maybe? Or is it Johnny? He probably wanted to find out how the date went.”_

_“That’s right. Johnny wanted to see how your date went. So he’s going to stop by.”_

Wade looked at Johnny and Richards. “Why does he think he’s talking to me?”

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know. But if they can make someone hallucinate someone else, it would explain how they got into the safes, and found everything so quickly.”

“I don’t think this is just a drug.” Richards said. “I think we’re dealing with something else here. Mutant or enhanced, I don’t know, but I don’t know any drug that’ll do this.” Richards said.

“Okay. Well, I’m going in there.” Wade said, heading towards the door.

“Not yet.” Richards said. “If they got to him, maybe they got to the others at the club, and if we don’t wait for the others to show up, we won’t get all of them implicated.”

“I could just take care of the others.” Wade growled.

“Did you see enough of them to find them all?” Richards asked.

Wade’s shoulder’s slumped. 

“So far, Peter’s safe. We’ll wait until the rest get there, then we’ll grab the bunch and we’ll figure out what’s going on with Peter.”

Wade turned back and watched the monitors. “He lays one hand on Petey and I’m going.”

The other two nodded, eyes fixed on the monitors.

Randy had settled Peter on the couch again, and was walking around the apartment, checking everything, picking up things and opening doors and drawers.

Peter was just sitting on the couch, smiling, and watching Randy wander around.

A knock on the door, and Randy hurried over and opened it up. Four more people walked in.

“Okay.” Wade said. “We’ve got the team. Now I’m getting Peter out.”

“Give them a minute.” Richards said. “Let’s see what they do.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. Peter’s got no idea what’s going on, and he’s in a room with a bunch of thugs that have raped their previous victims.” Wade snarled, leaving the apartment.

“Wade!” Richards called after him.

“Let him go dad. Would you really wait until the last minute if it was mom?” Johnny asked. 

Wade got to the door and hesitated. He wasn’t sure what the best approach was. He still had the earpiece on, though, so he could hear the crew talking in the apartment.

 _“Take him to the bedroom. He says there’s no safe in the place, he put all the valuables in the freezer.”_ Randy’s voice.

 _“I’ll take care of him.”_ Another male voice answered. _“This’ll be fun. He’s cuter than the last one.”_

 _“Don’t forget, stay within range._ ” A third voice. 

_“Give me the transmitter then.”_ The second voice answered. _“I’m going to be too busy to worry about where you guys are.”_

Wade growled. He wasn’t waiting any longer. The door was locked, which he had expected, but it only took a single kick to break through. He’d made sure to make it easy to get through.

He burst through the door with a gun in one hand and a katana in the other. 

Four people jerked to stare at him. Randy glaring. “Who the fuck are you.” He asked.

“I’m Wade.” Wade answered. “Who the fuck are you.”

Randy turned and yelled towards the bedroom. “Bring Jim out here, won’t you?” He turned back towards Wade. “You’re going to be sorry you interrupted us.” He pulled a small device out of his pocket and pointed it at Wade, pushing a button on the end.

For a minute, everything went out of focus. Then, suddenly, there was a new voice in his head. “What the hell.” Wade said. His vision kept going in and out of focus. Randy was there, then suddenly it was Peter, smiling at him.

[That’s just rude.] Yellow said. [There’s barely enough room in here for the three of us, you’re not welcome.]

{Get out.} White growled.

For a minute, it felt like there was a tornado in Wade’s head. Then Randy was back, and someone was dragging Peter into the room. Peter was hanging off the new guy, looking at him like he was his new best friend. Peter’s shirt was off, and his hair was a mess. Wade growled at the sight.

Peter turned and looked at the noise, tilting his head. “Wade, who’s that?” He asked.

Wade realized he was talking to the man he was hanging off of, not him. “Baby boy?” He asked. “You okay?”

“What the hell is going on.” Randy asked. He pointed the device at Wade again and pushed the button. Nothing happened.

“Sorry. Already fucked up in the head.” Wade said. “Can’t fuck it up anymore. Now just let my baby boy go and I won’t kill you all.”

The man Peter was hanging onto laughed. “I’m pretty sure he’s very happy where he is. Aren’t you cutie?” 

Peter smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek.

Randy laughed. “If you don’t want us to hurt pretty boy here, you’d better put your weapons down.”

Wade strode forward. “I don’t think so.”

“Sweetie,” the man holding Peter said, “This guy is trying to hurt me. You’re not going to let him do that, are you?”

Peter strode forward towards Wade. “You need to leave.” He said angrily. 

Wade stared at him in shock. Shit. This was bad. He needed to do something before Peter revealed he was Spider-Man. Or seriously damaged Wade. Or both. 

He re-holstered his weapons, then held up his hands. “No worries… I’ll just leave.”

Peter nodded firmly, then turned back to the man who had been holding him and wrapped his arms around him. “You know you could have handled that yourself, Wade.” He laughed.

As soon as his back was turned, Wade had a throwing knife out and sailing at Peter’s head, hoping like crazy he was still safe from Peter’s Spider Sense. 

The knife hilt hit Peter in the back of the head with a thunk, and he dropped to the floor. Before he had finished falling, Wade was armed again. “Okay. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. Only difference is how many holes in the bunch of you before I take you in.”

“What do we do?” One of the group who hadn’t said anything before asked. “We’ve never run into anyone immune before.”

“You really want to end up in jail?” Randy snarled, pulling out a gun. 

Wade sighed. They never agreed to the easy way. A second knife hilt slammed between Randy’s eyes and the man hit the floor before he’d even got the weapon pointed towards Wade.

The others seemed to feel it wasn’t worth the risk to do anything stupid and raised their hands.

“Okay, I think it’s safe for you to come in.” Wade said. “The one with the gizmo is out.”

A minute later and Johnny and Richards came into the room and quickly had everyone handcuffed.

“Search that one.” Wade said, pointing at the one Peter had been with. “He’s probably got another one of those gizmo thingies.”

Johnny went through the guy’s pockets and held up a small tube. “This it?” He tossed it to his dad.

“Not sure what it does, but I’m guessing turning it off would be a good start.” Wade said.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Richards replied. “I’m not sure what it’s doing, and not sure what will happen if we turn it off.”

Wade frowned. “Well, we know they turned it off on the previous victims, and they’re okay.”

Richards nodded. “True. And I suspect the longer this is on, the more the damage it does. I don’t want to wait until we can get Professor X here.” He shrugged and pushed a button. The small light at the end went out. 

“You take Peter, we’ll get these guys locked up.” Johnny said, then grinned. “And have fun explaining how you gave him the only injury he got.”

Wade frowned. “I couldn’t risk him doing anything that would…”

Johnny laughed. “I know, and he’ll understand too.” Then he sobered up. “In fact, I’d hate to think what would have happened if he hurt you or anyone else.”

Wade nodded. “Yeah.” He scooped Peter up off the floor. 

“Hold on.” Richards said. “We do need a blood sample.” 

Wade shook his head, “No, we know now that even if they used drugs on him at the beginning, it’s that thing there that you need to research. No need for blood samples or any other bodily fluids.”

Johnny laughed. “Sorry dad. Maybe someday.”

*****

Peter woke up the following morning in his own bed, rather confused. 

“Hey web head.” Wade said, walking in. “You finally awake?”

“Wade?” Peter asked. “What… How’d I get here?”

“Do you remember anything?” Wade asked, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

Peter shook his head. “I remember walking into the club, but nothing else, really.”

“Well, we got the guys, and you’re fine. Though you might have a bit of headache and that’s on me.”

“On you? What happened?” Peter asked.

“Well, let me tell you a story…” Wade said.


	23. Bleeding Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter isn't indestructible. He gets shot, but he doesn't realize just how bad the wound is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for gore and pain.
> 
> I've been avoiding this one all day; it's getting to the point where I'm seriously going to run out of time, but... really? Bleeding out? I don't want to do that to anyone. I took so much field first aid, and I know just how wrong this can go (and how often it can have a really depressing ending.) But this month is about going ahead no matter what... So here goes.

The human body, even unenhanced, is an amazing thing. Powerful, fast, unbelievably resistant. And, at the same time, incredibly fragile. 

Spider-man and Deadpool have been patrolling together for quite a while now. At the beginning, it was Spider-man patrolling and Deadpool stalking him. Then Spider-man patrolling and Deadpool _just happened to be passing by, so why don’t I help you with these bad guys_. Then Spider-man decided if that’s how it was going to be, it was at least going to be on his, Spider-man’s, terms. So he sat Deadpool down and offered to patrol with him, provided he followed Spider-man’s ground rules. Namely, no killing and no maiming unless absolutely necessary. (Absolutely necessary means an innocent’s life is in danger, Deadpool, not because knocking him out would be boring.)

Now, they make a good team. Even the Avengers admit it. Although the team hates working with them because they _never shut up_ and _don’t focus on the fight because they’re too busy wisecracking_ (except for Clint, who’s just as bad.) 

On the other hand, Spider-man doesn’t really want to be an Avenger. He doesn’t like how they’re so entwined with Shield, and how they dismiss things he brings to them by saying _it’s not really big enough to worry about_ or _we’re busy with something else_. In Spider-man’s opinion, you can’t call yourself a hero if you only worry about villains if they’re costing the city above a certain dollar amount. Deadpool’s happy to back Spider-man up in taking down bank robbers, muggers, and rapists. So, yeah, they make a good team.

Though it would be nice if he could take a day off every now and then. Between work, his college classes, and his alter ego, there isn’t a lot of time left for non-essentials like, oh, sleep.

Which might explain why he’s in this position, lying on his back in an alley and staring up at the sky. Something’s soaking through his suit, and for a change, he’s hoping it’s something leaking out of the nearby garbage dumpster. But he’s pretty sure it’s not, based on the ache in his leg and the way things are starting to grey out on him. He’s pretty sure it’s blood from the bullet hole in his thigh, and he’s pretty sure it might have nicked something important. Not completely severed it, since he’s still somewhat alert, but more than the graze he’d thought it was at first.

They’d found a group of guys who had broken open the back door to a jewelry store and were emptying it out. They hadn’t seemed like much more than your basic garden variety thieves, but one of them must have had a little more skill since they’d managed to get past the security system. Or maybe one of them was an employee. But they’d been easy enough to stop. They didn’t even seem to have weapons. Spider-Man was guarding the door while Deadpool went around tying the others up with cable ties. Spider-Man felt a hum from his Spider sense, and one of the group pulled a gun out of somewhere and shot at Spider-man. He dodged, but didn’t see the other guy walking down the alley from behind them, probably the driver. Spider-man had spun around too late and saw the gun in his hand, but too late. The guy was already pulling the trigger. He panicked and ran when Deadpool burst through the door at the sound of the gunshot.

He’d thought the bullet had just grazed his leg; it had burned, but not that bad. So when Deadpool looked at him, he waved him after the idiot. Even with just a graze, he really wasn’t in the mood to run after someone. 

Only now he was pretty sure he was bleeding out. He figured he should do something, but it was getting hard to think. It was surprising how little pain there was. He figured getting shot had to really hurt. But mostly it was just fuzzy. 

“Got him.” He heard Deadpool call cheerfully. He tried to lift his head, but it really didn’t seem worth the effort.

“Spidey?” Deadpool’s voice wasn’t cheerful now. If anything, it sounded confused. “What are you doing?” 

“Pool,” Spider-man gasped. He wasn’t sure he’d made a sound. There was a solid _thunk_. Interesting. His hearing was still working pretty well, even if he couldn’t see too well. Sounded like Pool had knocked the guy on the head.

A moment later, and Deadpool was kneeling over him. “What the actual fuck, Spidey. Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

“Didn’t hurt.” He whispered, but Deadpool didn’t seem to really be paying any attention. He was yanking on his leg and _ow_ now it hurt. A lot. The grey edges turned to black spots and then nothing.

*****

Most of the time, Deadpool isn’t really _Deadpool_. Most of the time he’s just Wade (and two voices) in a red suit. He thinks it’s like what Peter talks about when he talks about the difference between _Peter_ and _Spider-man_. Peter seems to think they’re two completely different people, but Wade knows that Spider-man is Peter, just amped up to 11. For Peter, it’s the suit that lets him switch between the two. For Wade, it’s not the suit. It’s just, sometimes, Deadpool’s needed. Usually, it’s when he’s on a job and things go to shit, and Deadpool takes over. Deadpool doesn’t need to think, he just does what needs to be done.

Wade takes one look at Spider-man lying in a rapidly growing pool of blood, and Deadpool’s there. He knocks out the thief he’d caught, can’t risk the guy interrupting, and he’s at Spider-man’s side in seconds. _Bullet through and through. Bleeding heavy but not spurting. Probably nicked one of the larger veins. Too high for a tourniquet. Needs hospital._

He’s got a hand clamped over the wound, slowing the blood flow, and has his phone to his ear.

“Pool. How do you keep…” Stark’s angry voice snapped, answering the phone.

“No time.” Deadpool snaps. “Spider-man’s been shot. Through and through. No artery damage, but he’s bleeding out. Need to get him in fast.”

“Where are…. Never mind. Keep the line open. I’ll find you.” And Stark’s gone.

Deadpool drops the phone next to him and adds his second hand to slow the blood flow. He can see Spider-man’s chest rising, and it’s fairly even. That’s good. Hopefully Stark will be fast. He’s running through everything he has on him, trying to think of anything that might work better over the wound than just his hand. He is definitely adding a few things to his first aid kit going forward.

He’s not sure how long it takes for Stark to get there, it can’t have been that long; maybe ten minutes. Much faster than an ambulance would have been. But he’s still going to have to fly…

“How’s he doing?” Dr. Banner asks, dropping next to Deadpool. 

“Heart rates depressed but steady. Breathing good. Lost consciousness before I called. Still out.” Deadpool’s voice is flat. Banner just glances at him.

Stark walks up, carrying equipment. “Clint’s on his way with the quinjet, but thought it would be best to get him stabilized as soon as possible.”

Banner’s already attaching an IV to one arm, just hanging the bag off of Stark’s arm. Then he turns to the leg. “Okay, let me get the pressure bandages ready, and when I give you the word, you move.”

Deadpool nods. 

Banner gets more equipment out, hanging things over his shoulders. “Okay. Now.”

Deadpool lets go of the leg and backs up out of the way, Banner’s already wiping and wrapping the thigh. Then he’s got a blood pressure cuff on Spider-man’s arm and a stethoscope against his elbow.

He listens briefly, then nods at Deadpool. “Pressure’s a bit low, but not too bad.”

“Quinjet’s here.” Stark says. “No place nearby to land.”

Banner looks around. “You’re gonna have to fly him up then.” 

Stark nods, then leans over.

“No, Deadpool, pick him up. Don’t tangle the lines.”

Deadpool walks around and scoops up Spider-man, trying to keep from pulling the line running into his arm, and lays him over Stark’s arms. 

“Got him. Meet you guys back at the tower.” Stark says. “Happy’s on his way to pick you up.”

The problem with being _Deadpool_ is that _nothing_ seems to matter. Deadpool’s resolved the situation, stopped the bleeding and got the victim delivered to medical care. Now his job’s over. Now he just needs to take care of getting the police here to pick up the jewel thieves.

Fortunately, Banner knows what it’s like to have an alter ego that’s really not in touch. So he simply tells Deadpool that he’s needed to debrief on the situation and gets him in the car and to the tower which gives Wade time to take back over.

*****

When Spider-man wakes up, he’s confused. He’d closed his eyes in an alley, and now he had no idea where he was. He glances around to see Wade sitting near him reading a magazine. Lifting his hand up, he can feel his mask is still on. But, if Wade’s here and relaxed, must be somewhere safe.

“Pool?” He tries to speak, but nothing comes out at first. He tries to clear his throat, and that get’s Wade’s attention.

“Spidey.” Wade says, leaning over the bed. “How ya doing?”

“Okay?” Spider-man replies. “Where?”

“Tin Man and Dr Green and Angry came and picked us up. You weren’t looking too good, had me a little worried.” Spider-man can see he’s nervous. He won’t look directly at him, and he’s playing with his gloves.

“Bad?” 

Wade lifts his head enough to look at Spider-man directly. “Almost. Lost a lot of blood kiddo. Wasn’t sure I was going to get you to help in time. Dr Green hooked you up like a vampire, though, and got you back here. Then patched everything up. Suit’s still gonna need some work, but you should be okay.”

Spider-man nodded. 

“Just said you need to drink lots of liquids and probably eat some liver. Good for low blood.”

Spider-man grimaced and shook his head. “Yeah, not eating liver. Lots of other ways to up my iron intake without that.”

“Like what?” Wade said. 

“Red meat. Spinach, beans.” Spider-man replied. 

“Well, steak tacos it is.” Wade said, grinning and clapping his hands. “As soon as Big and Angry comes in and checks you out I’ll take you home and make you some dinner.”

“Sounds good.” Spider-man smiles. 


	24. Hidden Injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This takes place after Bleeding Out, and Peter doesn't want Wade to know he's injured, since the big lug has been a bit of a baby after the last injury.

New York has had more than its share of alien attacks. Unfortunately, besides the obvious issue of alien creatures wreaking havoc and terrorizing citizens, there’s another issue. Aliens tend to leave behind alien garbage. Shield and the Avengers are pretty good about cleaning it all up. The problem is, since the attacks cover a lot of area, the junk can end up anywhere. And sometimes the junk doesn’t look alien or like a weapon and gets missed. Or picked up by someone who comes across it first. If it happens to just be a random piece of jewelry, or the alien equivalent of a phone charm, no biggie. But every once in a while something gets found that’s more than it looks like. 

After the fact, Shield tried to track the artifact back, but wasn’t able to because it had changed hands too many times. Someone picked it up, thinking it was just an interesting rock, then passed it on to someone else. And so on. Somewhere along the way, someone hung it from a chain and it got sold as a necklace. Then given as a gift. And so on. 

Unfortunately, it eventually ended up with someone who accidentally performed whatever action was needed to turn it on. And that’s when the problems started.

****

It’s been several weeks since Peter was shot, and he’s noticed a big difference in Wade’s behavior. He’s always been a little protective of Spider-man when they patrol, but lately he’s been driving Peter nuts. He rushes in, throws himself in front of anything that looks like it might come anywhere near Spider-man, and always has at least part of his attention on the web slinger when they’re out.

It gets so bad that Spider-man finally reaches his limit and webs Deadpool to a wall in the middle of a battle against a group of goons who they caught near the docks, smuggling weapons. Spider-man spends the rest of the battle dodging attacks, webbing up crooks, and yelling at Deadpool. 

It ends with Spider-man standing in front of Deadpool with his hands on his hips, threatening to do all his patrolling alone if Deadpool doesn’t cool it with the overprotective crap.

Deadpool drops his head, “I thought I was going to lose you.” He says.

And just like that, Spider-man’s anger is gone. He walks over and puts his hands on Deadpool’s shoulders. “Pool, the thing is, acting like you are is making it harder to stay safe. We work together really well, because we know we can count on the other. But when you’re trying to take care of everything at once, I can’t count on you. You’re bouncing around and your attention is split in a million directions. I can take care of myself.”

Deadpool looks at him for a minute, then drops his head again. “It was close, though.”

“And you got me help because I can count on you.” Spider-man says. “Now, if I cut you loose, are you going to help me patrol?”

After that, things are a better. Peter knows Wade’s still really nervous that he’s going to get hurt, but at least they’re back to working as a team. It’s just going to take some time until Wade can relax about the whole almost dying thing.

Their latest battle, for example, went pretty well. Some new villain, calling himself Doc Nano, had shown up. He apparently had a grudge against the city, from what Peter had heard of his ranting while blasting everything and everyone who got in his way with some sort of micro particle ray from his hands. It was nasty enough to sand the paint off of cars if hit close enough. Fortunately, they’d gotten all the people out of range quickly and it was just Spider-man and Deadpool (and a lot of property damage) until they incapacitated the guy. The police had already called in Shield to pick him up when they’d finished, since they had no idea how to disarm the guy. 

After watching the man leaving, still webbed up, but now in one of Shield’s containment vans, Deadpool turned and looked at Spider-man. Who just shook his head. “Let’s go home”

Peter knew what was coming, and he really didn’t want to deal with it out in public. 

Wade had gotten better, but he was still really worried. He wouldn’t ask, but Peter knew he needed to know he was alright. So, as soon as they were in the apartment, Peter pulled his mask off. “I’m fine Pool.”

“It looked like he hit you at least once with that beam.”

“Not a beam. More like a sandblaster.” Peter replied, pulling up his sleeve. “Only caught me with the edge, but it was not pleasant.” A narrow slice was visible in the skin of his arm. It wasn’t deep and was already scabbed over. 

Peter looked up, and could tell Wade was anxiously trying not to grab his arm for a closer look. “It’s okay, Red,” He held out the arm. “Look, I’m definitely not bleeding out from this.”

Wade took his arm and looked at it carefully. “That’s it?” He asked.

“Yep. That’s it.” Peter grinned. “How about you?”

Wade dropped his arm and snorted. “He didn’t get me with that beam, but he did manage to drop those catwalks on my head. I might even have a bruise.”

Peter laughed. Yeah. Just needed a little time, and they’d be good.

But after that, Peter started noticing that things weren’t going so good anymore. Deadpool was fine, but Spider-man… Spider-man was having a hard time shaking things off. Bruises that would have taken a day to heal were taking longer now. He was finding himself sore after fights, something that hadn’t happened in ages. And we’re not talking battles with Rhino, which would leave _anyone_ sore. We’re talking battles with ordinary run-of-the-mill crooks punching with fists, not swinging crowbars with enhanced strength.

He didn’t say anything to Deadpool; if he did, he knew he’d go overboard again. He needed to just figure out what was going on. Maybe get a little more sleep, make sure he was eating enough.

He crawled out of bed one morning, and could barely stand. A kick he’d taken the night before, which should have be down to a mostly healed bruise, was a dark black and purple mass covering most of his stomach. Running his hand over it, he could tell it was still swollen. He sighed. He had to admit something was wrong. Only problem was, what was the best way to find out what was wrong? Wade wasn’t home, which was good. If he’d seen Peter this morning, there wouldn’t have been any way to hide the problem. 

He gingerly made his way to the bathroom and took a shower. Then collapsed on the couch with coffee and an ice pack. Finally, he grabbed his phone and dialed Bruce.

“Spider-man. What’s up?” Bruce answered.

“Something’s off with my healing.” Peter said. “It’s, well, it’s not healing any more.”

“You want me to come there?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah. I…” Peter hesitated. 

“Still haven’t told the rest of the team?” Bruce asked.

“No.” Peter sighed. 

“No worries. I can’t say I blame you. I’ll see what we can do there. May need to sneak you in here. Or maybe Pym can help us run some tests. I can leave in a few minutes, we’ll see what’s up.”

“Thanks.” Peter said, hanging up the phone.

However, it’s Wade who has the answer (though he doesn’t even know what’s wrong.) He comes home from his job for Shield three days later to find Peter lying on the couch pretending to focus on his thesis, so Wade won’t question his being home. Wade takes his explanation that he’s trying to get as much done as possible with a nod. “Got a story for you!” Wade announced, scooping up Peter’s legs, dropping on the couch, and draping his legs across his lap. “Remember that weirdo with the sandblaster we fought a while back?”

“The one Shield picked up?” Peter asked, curiously.

“Yeah! Turns out he had some serious nanobot infection from some alien tech he found. That wasn’t sand he was shooting; was nanobots. Fortunately, they’re apparently sensitive to sunshine, and they ended up dead quickly.”

Peter glanced at his arm. The slice healed, but unlike his usual slashes, there was a white scar where the beam had scored his skin. They didn’t like sunlight, but they’d broken his skin. Maybe….

While Wade rambled on about tiny robots that looked like Bender, Peter grabbed his phone and quickly texted the news to Banner.

“Who ya texting Baby Boy?” Wade asked.

“Banner.” Peter smiled. “He’s been helping me out with my thesis. Thought he might be interested in the nanobots. We were just talking about them the other day; he was talking about how he thought they could be used to target specific cells, like viruses or tumors.”

Wade nodded. “Smart people stuff.”

Peter shoved at his shoulder. “You’re smart people too. Just because you have no interest in Biochem doesn’t mean you’re not smart.”

“Eh. I always liked gym better than any of my other classes.” Wade shrugged.

Peter snorted. “And while I admire the heck out of your fine physique, there’s no way you became as good a merc as I’ve heard you were by being an idiot.”

Wade smiled at him happily. “Well, there is a little more to it than running across rooftops and pulling triggers.”

“I figured.” Peter smiled back. 

*****

Turned out, Peter’s body had been infected with nanobots, or whatever the things were. Problem was, they were protein based and they couldn’t figure out how to remove them. In the meantime, the nanobots kept reproducing. 

“What about dialysis?” Banner asked, finally.

Pym looked at him. “That might work, they’re almost small enough to go through the filter. Might have to make some tweaks to the equipment, but it could work.”

Peter frowned. “What’s the impact of that?”

Banner shrugged. “Not much, I mean many people go through it multiple times a week if they have damaged kidneys. Mostly it’ll be boring for you while you have to sit there for the whole procedure.”

“How long?” Peter asked.

Banner frowned. “Usually takes about four hours. Of course, we’re going to have to process all your blood, and might have to use a different filter, so it might take a little longer.”

“We have a scanner now that can locate the nanobots.” Pym said. 

“I’m worried about the rate they’re multiplying.” Banner said. “And I’m worried about what else they may do. I think we need to get this going as soon as possible.”

Pym nodded in agreement. 

Peter sighed. “Okay. You guys get everything set up. And let me know when it’s ready. I’ll be there.”

When Peter got home, there was a note on the couch from Wade, telling him that the merc was on another job for Shield and wouldn’t be back for most of a week. Peter relaxed, he’d been trying to figure out how to hide this from Wade. Now he didn’t have to try. He’d be through the treatment and recovered by the time Wade got back. On the other hand, May would be really disappointed when Peter came alone for dinner the next day. 

May was disappointed that Wade missed their weekly dinner, but she was happy to have time to talk to Peter. As soon as dinner was served, she started in.

“So, Peter, how have you been?” She asked.

“Fine. I’m making a lot of progress on my thesis, and things have been calm in the city.”

May nodded. “Is that so? And what’s up with you?”

“Me?” Peter looked at her, surprised. “What do you mean me?”

May sighed. “Look, I know you and Wade both think you’re protecting me, and I appreciate that. Really, I do. But I know something’s wrong. You haven’t come over with bruises since you became Spider-man. Now, suddenly, half the time I see you, you’re black and blue. And when you’re not, you’re walking stiffly or moving slowly.”

Peter stared at her. “What? Spider? What?”

May smiled. “Peter, honey, you are an awful liar. I’ve known you’re Spider-man for years. And I also know Wade’s Deadpool.”

Peter gaped. 

“Close your mouth, dear, you’ll catch flies like that.” May laughed.

“And… and you’re okay with that?” Peter asked.

May shrugged. “Wade’s a good man. And anyone who’s going to watch your back and keep you safe is good in my book.”

Peter shook his head. “You’ve really known for years?” He asked finally.

May grinned. “I thought you’d tell me someday. But…” She frowned. “I need to know what’s wrong.”

Peter ducked his head. “It’s…” He groaned and then explained, as best he could, the whole story.

May frowned. “So Dr. Banner thinks the dialysis will work?”

Peter nodded. “It should. The nanobots are small enough to go through the filter, so it should be able to get them all out. May take a few rounds, but like he said, people do this multiple times a week for years and survive. I can get through a few rounds.”

“What does Wade think?” May asked. “I’m surprised he’s good with taking a job while you’re going through this.”

Peter winced. “Wade… doesn’t know.”

“Excuse me.” May’s voice made it clear she was upset with him.

Peter ducked his head and stared at his hands. “I got hurt a while ago, and he got super protective. I didn’t want to worry him any more.”

“Mm hmm.” May murmured. “So you lied to him.”

Peter’s head shot up. “I didn’t lie to him! I just… I just didn’t say anything.” His voice trailed off.

“A lie of omission is still a lie. You don’t have to tell an untruth to break someone’s trust.” May said.

“But he’d worry!” Peter said.

“Like I did when you crawled out of your bedroom every night and tied up criminals?” May asked. “Did your not telling me what you were doing save me from worrying? Let me give you a hint, no. It didn’t. In fact, not knowing what was going on meant I worried even more.”

Peter sighed.

“How do you think Wade is going to feel when he finds out?” May asked.

“If he finds out,” Peter muttered, looking at his hands.

May glared at him. “No, when he finds out. That man doesn’t strike me as stupid or unobservant. Is he? Stupid or unobservant, that is?”

Peter shook his head. “No. He’s not.” 

“So, how do you think he’ll feel when he finds out you lied to him?”

Peter slumped. “You’re right, May.”

May took another bite of her dinner. “So what are you going to do?”

Peter looked at her. “Do you mind if I leave early? I think I’d better go and call Wade tonight and let him know what’s going on now.”

May smiled. “Of course, Peter. And if you need me to be there, I’ll be happy to sit and keep you company. Or keep Wade company. I know he hates hospitals.”

Peter smiled weakly, “well, it won’t be in a hospital, but he might appreciate your support. I’ll let you know.” 

May reached over and gripped Peter’s hand. “Tell Wade I said hello.”

Peter smiled. “I will. If he forgives me for the last few weeks.”

May smiled. “He will. That man really loves you. He might be angry for a while, but he’ll forgive you.”

****

Wade wasn’t angry though; in fact, Peter thought he was relieved.

“Nanobots?” Wade sighed. “And they can do something about them? Thank Fuck baby boy. I thought you were losing your abilities and…. Well, to be honest, my first thought was cancer.”

If he hadn’t been feeling awful before, Peter was now almost drowning in guilt. He’d thought he’d kept everything from Wade, but Wade had noticed and jumped to an even more horrible conclusion. Of course, he’d thought he’d kept everything from Aunt May, too. Maybe everyone in New York actually knew his secret identity.

“So when is the treatment?” Wade asked.

“Don’t know.” Peter said. “Banner and Pyme are going to let me know as soon as they have the equipment set up. Oh, and Aunt May says she’ll keep you company during the treatment. Just let her know if you want her there.”

“That woman is amazing.” Wade said, and Peter could hear the smile in his voice.

“Oh. And she knows your Deadpool.” Peter added.

Wade laughed. “She’s sharp.”

Peter sighed. “And apparently all these years I hid being Spider-man from her, she knew.” He groaned. “Who else knows?”

Wade laughed harder. “Baby boy, you are an awful liar.”

“That’s what May said.”

“Alright. I’ll talk to Fury tomorrow. Let me know when you need me back and I’ll be there.” Wade said.

“Will do.” Peter said, hanging up. 

When the day for the treatment rolled around two days later, it was unbelievable anti-climatic. Peter had been expecting… he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. But all that happened was Banner and Pym made him comfortable in an armchair, and hooked up some lines into his arm. 

Wade and May were both there to keep him company, and they had some movies lined up to watch. If it wasn’t for the fact that his arm was strapped to a board and couldn’t move, it could have been any Sunday evening while they watched TV after dinner.

It took three treatments, three days in a row (the nanobots reproduced too rapidly to go longer) to get all the nanobots out. But after his treatment on the third day, the scanner couldn’t find any nanobots and they declared him clean. (Though they decided he had to come back weekly to be checked for the next month, just to be sure.)

And Wade, well Wade was still a little too protective, but Peter guessed he could deal with that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this just kind of ends. I have to go and put the chickens away because Kitty is teaching all the other hens that sleeping on the roof of the coop is fun and exciting, rather than going inside where they're protected from things that go bump in the night (and eat chickens.)


	25. Humiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone's pretending to be Spider-man and killing people.

****

Peter rolled over and glared at his alarm clock. Who the heck was calling him at 6 a.m. on the only day he got to sleep in? Especially after he’d finally gotten to bed last night at around 3 a.m. meaning he had gotten at most… He slammed his head into the pillow. He was too tired to math.

He groped over to his end table and grabbed the phone, bringing it to his ear and whining “hello.” He wasn’t sure whoever it was could hear him with his face half pressed into the pillow, but that’s what they got for calling at this time.

“Peter?” Aunt May’s voice sounded in his ear. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible. And I want you to know, I know it’s not true. But it looks really bad.”

Peter rolled over and pulled himself up to sitting against the headboard. “What? What’s going on?” He asked, rubbing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Peter. It’s you I’m worried about. I take it you haven’t seen the news yet?” May’s voice was calm, but he could hear her playing with something, clicking it against the table. 

“No, I was asleep, was up late doing homework and just crashed as soon as I turned in the project.” Peter yawned.

“Is Wade there?” May asked.

Peter was starting to get worried. “No, he’s not due back until tonight. I’m getting a little worried here, May. What’s wrong?”

May took a deep breath. “There’s film someone recorded of Spider-man last night, killing someone. It’s awful, Peter. I know it wasn’t you, but it looks very convincing. The suit looks right, and they have audio, and the voice sounds right too.”

Peter’s mind went blank for a second. _Did she just imply she knew he was Spider-man?_ “Spider-man?” He asked blankly.

May sighed. “Look. We don’t really have time for the whole ‘May, I’m not Spider-man’ and my explaining how I know. Can we just take it as a given I know and move on to the real problem, which is someone is out there pretending to be Spider-man and killing people. And making sure that it’s recorded. And is now on the morning news.”

Peter pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the phone. Then put it back to his ear. “May. What am I going to do? It wasn’t me.” His voice was weak, but he was having a hard time breathing.

“I know it wasn’t you.” May said calmly. “Anyone who knows you will know it wasn’t you. And even people who don’t know you are going to have a hard time believing it was Spider-man. But it looks bad. And that horrible man you work for is all over this.”

Peter groaned. “He hates Spider-man already. He managed to turn a story about me saving someone from an apartment fire into claims that I was lighting fires to get attention.”

“I know.” May said. “The man is vile. I think you need to get Wade back as soon as you can. You’re going to need to find out who’s doing this, and I don’t think Spider-man is going to be able to do the investigating at this point.”

“But…” Peter said, “He’s got to. He’s got to go out and help, so they can see…”

“Peter, talk to Wade. But I’ve seen how badly this got over other enhanced humans who were viewed as a danger. You need to expose whoever is doing this first.”

Peter sighed. He didn’t want to argue with May, but he wasn’t just going to let someone run around and destroy Spider-man’s reputation. “Okay, May. I’m going to get up and watch the news and find out what happened. Wade’s home tonight, and I’ll talk to him then. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Alright Peter. I’m here if you need anything.” May said, then disconnected. 

*****

May looked at her phone and decided she couldn’t rely on Peter to be safe. She had Wade’s number, though she’d never called him before. She decided it was about time she did.

*****

Peter dragged himself out of bed and grabbed a cup of coffee before dropping down in front of the television. May was right. All the news channels were showing a shaky video recorded on a cell phone, of Spider-man beating a man to death. It was horrific, gory, and absolutely terrifying because it looked and sounded so much like him, Peter was beginning to wonder if he’d somehow been taken over and just didn’t remember what happened last night.

He watched the video over and over, how many times he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure if there was any more to the video, all of them started with Spider-man punching the man in the face with what was clearly more than normal strength, and ended with him walking away leaving the dead body in a bloody heap on the ground. 

“It’s more than a little suspicious.” The voice startled him so badly he jumped on the ceiling before spinning to face Wade.

“Wade. What? You’re back?” Peter gasped.

Wade looked up at him. “May May called and told me what was going on. You gonna come down here, Baby Boy?”

Peter dropped back onto the couch. “Wade…” 

“Yeah, its bad kiddo.” Wade sat on the couch next to him and pulled him over onto his lap. Peter wrapped his arms around the merc’s shoulders and sobbed. “but like I said, awfully suspicious. The person filming just happened to be there, and the fight just happened to take place in the only area for miles with enough lighting for you to see what’s going on. And there’s not enough context to know what happened, just a man getting beaten to death. Also, did you notice he ran away? If he was in a panic about killing someone, wouldn’t Spider-man web?” Wade hugged him tighter, “And that ass is not as nice as yours.”

Peter chuckled wetly into his neck. “I highly doubt New York is going to accept that as proof it wasn’t me.”

“No, but the other supers will recognize that even though that was clearly an enhanced individual, the fighting style was completely different from yours.”

“He looked just like me.” Peter protested.

“No, he really didn’t. You depend on your webs and your legs, mostly. You block with your arms, but you use them more to swing or grab. Most of the damage you do is kicking. That guy looked like he might have some martial arts training, but he always had at least one foot on the ground.”

“I need to go out there and tell people then.” Peter said.

Wade shook his head. “Not right now, baby boy. Between Mustache and a few other loud mouth types who want all mutants and mutates locked up, the city is up in arms. They’ve been raising hell all morning.”

“All morning?” Peter asked, looking at him surprised.

“It’s 3.” Wade said. “How long have you been watching this crap?” He nodded at the TV.

“Since May called at 6 this morning.” Peter replied.

Wade put his chin on top of Peter’s head. “It’s terrible out there. I think you might want to stay in for a bit. Spider-Man definitely doesn’t want to go out. I think they’re upset enough out there that they’re not going to just yell, and if you’re lucky, they’ll just be throwing milkshakes.”

“And if I’m not lucky?” Peter asked.

“They might throw rocks. Or worse.” Wade said.

“What’s worse than rocks?” 

“Hmm. Shit. Paint. Eggs. Spit.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure you’re ready to be on the receiving end of some serious hate.”

Peter sighed. “I need to see.”

Wade hugged him tighter. “Okay. But we’re going as Wade and Peter, not Deadpool and Spider-man. And when you’ve had enough, we’ll come back and watch Disney movies and eat something.”

Peter was sure, like Aunt May had said, that people wouldn’t believe Spider-man would do such a thing. But walking around New York disabused him of that idea very quickly. Newspapers had headlines saying that Spider-man had gone evil. The news feeds in Times Square were running notifications that anyone seeing the masked hero needed to call police immediately. But the last straw was when they stopped in Starbucks to pick up some coffee. The group in line ahead of them and the group behind them were arguing with each other about what should be done to Spider-man. The ones in front wanted him arrested; the ones in back wanted him up for the death penalty and wanted this used as a basis for locking up all enhanced individuals.

After five minutes, Peter couldn’t take it any longer. Without saying anything, he just walked out. Wade caught up with him a few minutes later and wrapped an arm around him. “Hey. Dopinder will be here in a few. Do you want to go back home or to see May?” 

Peter looked at him, absolutely anguished. “What do I do, Wade? They think he’s a monster. They want him dead.”

Wade shook his head. “There’s a lot more to this baby boy. Someone planned this carefully and is pulling a lot of strings. This is about a lot more than Spider-man. They just picked him because so many people love him. If they can bring him down, the rest will go that much easier.”

Peter blinked, trying to keep back the tears.

“Okay. I’m making an executive decision here.” Wade said. “You need all the support you can get right now.” He pulled out his phone. “Hey May, Wade here. Peter’s having a bit of a rough day. Are you up to dinner with us? We can bring…. Oh. Okay. Yeah. That would be great. He loves your meatloaf. Okay. We’re waiting on a cab, then we’ll be headed straight there if that’s not too soon? Great. We’ll see you.” He put the phone back into his pocket and hugged Peter closer. “It’ll work out, Pete, I promise. It’ll work out.”


	26. Abandoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Probably not what most people had in mind for abandoned...  
> Wade finds an abandoned kid on his door step. Spider-man spots Deadpool walking around with a kid.

Spider-man usually only had time to patrol later at night. During the day he had to work or attend classes, and early evenings were spent studying. As for weekends, he had to do all the stuff that got ignored during the week—laundry, shopping, visiting May, and cleaning up.

But today was a holiday, so there was no work or classes, and he had done all the cleaning and work over the weekend. So he decided to relax by just swinging around the city. The nice thing about going out during the day is there was a lot less crime, and he got to relax and just people watch. Which was why he was siting on the roof of a coffee shop he licked, enjoying a cup of coffee and watching people walk down the street. He was playing a game with himself, trying to spot the tourists. Usually it wasn’t too hard; they were the only ones looking around. 

The group walking around the corner right now were clearly tourists; they kept turning around and staring behind themselves. He focused on the conversation, hoping to confirm his suspicion. Instead, what he heard had him instantly on guard.

“Should we call someone?” One man asked.

“I don’t know.” One woman replied. “She doesn’t look like he’s hurt her.”

Another snorted. “No one would let a kid walk around with him. He’s clearly dangerous.”

The other woman frowned. “I don’t know. She looks happy, she must know him.”

Spider-man leaned forward and threw his cup, getting it in the garbage can below. Then he got to his feet and walked over to the other side of the building to look where the group had come from.

Deadpool was walking down the street in full costume, carrying a little girl. She looked about three. Spider-man didn’t know Deadpool very well; he’d worked on one job with him for the Avengers. He’d been rather erratic, but he didn’t hurt kids. He knew that, because when they’d come across a kid in one room and Deadpool had instantly put away all his weapons and gotten the kid out before he’d go on and finish the mission. All the same, he couldn’t understand why Deadpool was with a kid. Who in their right mind would leave a kid with Deadpool?

He swung down and dropped next to Deadpool.

“Hello Pool.” Spider-man said, falling into step beside the merc. “Who’s your friend?”

The little girl gasped. “It’s Pider-man!”

Wade looked over. “Hey Spidey. This is Ellie. Found her outside my door, and we’re looking for her mom.”

“Hello Ellie.” Spider-man said. “What happened to your mom?”

The little girl shrugged. “Mommy said talk to Mr. Pool. He’s hero.” She grinned at Spider-man. “I seed you on TV.”

Spider-man smiled, though he knew she couldn’t see. “Sometimes I’m on TV. What was I doing?”

“You helpded the fire mens.” She replied.

Spider-man nodded. “I do that sometimes, when they need help.” He looked at Wade. “Can I talk to you in private?” He asked.

Wade shook his head. “Spidey, this area is better than my neighborhood, but I can’t just leave her here. I get it, okay? But trust me, she’s safe.”

Spider-man nodded. “I know that.”

Wade just looked at him for a moment. “You’re not… you’re not worried about her?”

Spider-man shook his head. “Remember that job we did together? I know how you are about kids. I know she’s safe. I just came down to see what was going on, and if I could help.”

Wade put the little girl down on the sidewalk. “Well, Ellie Belly, I think you should walk a little on your own.”

“Okay.” She grabbed his hand and then grabbed Spider-man’s with the other hand. 

They started walking down the street together.

“I left my apartment this morning,” Deadpool said, glancing over at Spider-man. “She was in the hallway, just sitting there and waiting. I was going to just walk by, I figured she was staying with one of the neighbors, but she grabbed my leg and asked if I was Mr. Pool. Then said her mom told her she was going to stay with me from now on.”

Spider-man stared at Wade, then looked down at the girl, then back at Wade. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know. She says her name is Ellie, and her mom is named ‘Mom.’”

Spider-man laughed. Then he looked down at the little girl. “Hey Ellie, honey, does your mommy have friends.”

“Yep.” The little girl was hopping and skipping, swinging from their hands.

“What do mommy’s friends call her?” Spider-man asked.

“E-mi-ly.” The little girl said. 

“Emily, hunh. That’s a pretty name. And did your mom tell you what your other name is?”

“I’m Ellie Macho.” The girl said. Then stopped and scowled. “El-a-nor Ca-ma-cho.” She said carefully. Then grinned up at Spider-man.

The two masked men had stopped when Ellie stopped. Spider-man looked up from Ellie and glanced at Deadpool, who looked frozen in place.

“Pool, you okay?” Spider-man asked.

Deadpool turned his head and looked at Spider-man. “Oh, no.” He said.

“What? What’s wrong?” Spider-man asked.

“I know, well knew, an Emily Preston. But that was years ago.” He looked down at Ellie, and Spider-man could see him gulp. He looked at Spider-man. “Can you… Could you…” His voice trailed off.

“Wade?” Spider-man prompted.

“I need to do some investigating.” Deadpool said lowly. “And it’s not in a place that I can take Ellie. Can you, could you watch her? I hate to ask, but I don’t have anyone else I can ask about leaving her. I can’t leave her with Weasel. She can’t go in a bar like that…”

Spider-man looked down at the little girl. “You’re going to find her mom?”

“I hope so,” Wade said. “But it’s not going to be…”

Spider-man took a deep breath. Part of him wanted to run, but he couldn’t leave this little girl on her own, any more than Wade could. And if Wade had a lead, he could spend his afternoon watching a little girl. “Yeah. I can do that. And you don’t have to worry, I’ve done a lot of babysitting before. And I have the world’s best reference on speed dial if I have any questions.”

Wade smiled him. “I don’t doubt it for a second. I figured you had a few merit badges in it.”

Spider-man laughed. “No, but we’ll be fine. But let me give you my number. So you can keep us up to date and let us know when you’re done.”

Wade handed over his phone, and Spider-man entered his number. He hesitated for a second before hitting save, but he really needed a way for Deadpool to reach him, and he could always change his number later if he had to. It wasn’t like there were that many people who had his number that he had to worry about getting the new information.

Wade squatted down to get closer to Ellie. “Ellie, I’m going to go see if I can find your mom. You’re going to stay with Spider-man, okay?”

The little girl looked at him, then glanced over at Spider-man. “I wanna stay with you.” She said.

“Don’t worry,” Deadpool said. “I won’t be gone long. And besides, Spidey here is a hero. You’ll be perfectly safe with him.”

The little girl sighed deeply, then let go of Deadpool’s hand. “Okay.”

Deadpool stood up and ruffled the girl’s hair. “Okay. I’ll see you guys lat…” He paused, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Here, for dinner and anything else you might need. She can’t walk too far, so you might need cabs or something.”

Spider-man tried to push the man’s hand away. “No, we’re fine.” He said.

Deadpool sighed. “No, if what I think is going on is going on, I should be paying. Just take it.”

Spider-man sighed, then tucked the money into the top of his boot. When Deadpool laughed at him, he glared. “What? Not all of us have costumes covered in pockets.”

Still laughing, Deadpool started walking away. 

Spider-man looked down at Ellie. “So, how do you feel about the planetarium?”

*****

Spider-man and Ellie visited the Planetarium, had a lunch break in a diner, and stopped in the natural history museum to look at the dinosaurs and hot dogs in the park for dinner before the two were exhausted. He’d gotten a few texts from Wade, but Wade thought it was going to be a few more hours. So, Spider-man decided they’d have to go back to his apartment. He wasn’t thrilled with Deadpool knowing where he lived, but he didn’t know what else to do. It would be worse to take her to Aunt May’s house, and she really needed to go to sleep soon.

“Hey, Ellie, how are you at keeping secrets?” He asked the little girl. 

“I can keep secrets.” Ellie said. She held up her little finger. “Promise.”

Spider-man smiled. “Okay. Well, I’m going to take you to my apartment, but you can’t tell anyone where I live.” He hooked pinkies with her. “It’s a secret.”

She nodded. “Promise.”

She was quiet on the cab ride home and did a good job of keeping herself quiet while he climbed up to his window (he couldn’t change out of his suit before going home like he usually did.) And as soon as they were in the apartment, she fell asleep on the couch. He thought about moving her to his bed, but decided she’d be fine there if he covered her up. He pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered her up. Then sat down on the floor next to the couch with his headphones on to watch movies on his phone.

At 11, Deadpool texted that he was on his way back and asked where he should meet.

Spider-man took a deep breath, glancing at Ellie, then decided he didn’t want to wake her up and drag her around town to meet with the Merc. 

_She’s asleep. You could come here, or you could pick her up in the morning?_ He texted back, hoping he wouldn’t regret it.

 _Where’s here?_ Deadpool texted back.

 _My apartment._ Spider-man texted back, then added his address.

The phone kept showing that Wade was typing. Then it would stop. Then typing. Finally, _You’re inviting me to your apartment? Are you sure?_

_Yeah. She’s exhausted and had a rough day._

_omw_

Spider-man went back to his movie and waited.

He’d fallen half asleep when a knock came on his door. He pulled himself to his feet, glancing at Ellie to make sure she was still sleeping, and went to open the door and let Wade in.

“Spidey.” Deadpool said. “Thanks.”

Spider-man shrugged. “No problem. She’s a good kid.”

Deadpool slumped. “Yeah. And I really don’t know how.”

Spider-man looked at him. Then he took Deadpool’s arm and pulled him further into the room. “Come on. Sit down. Tell me what’s going on. Want a drink?”

Deadpool let Spider-man pull him over to the counter between the living room and kitchen, and settle him on one of the stools.

“She’s mine.” Deadpool said, slouching in the chair with his hands clasped between his knees. “I don’t know how she could be. She’s clearly a good kid. And what the heck could she possibly have done to deserve me as a dad.”

Spider-man sat on the other stool. “I haven’t worked a lot with you Pool, but from what I’ve seen, you’re not stupid. But why’s she here?” He glanced over at the girl to make sure she was still asleep.

“Her mom’s in some trouble. Has to run. She can’t run with a kid, so she left her with me. Said it was time I took responsibility.” He looked at Spider-man. “What am I going to do with a kid? I don’t even have a house that’s child proofed.”

Spider-man looked at him. “You can always put her up for adoption.” He said. “There are a lot of good people looking for kids.”

Deadpool looked at him. “I know. And it’s probably the right thing to do. But...” He looked at Spider-man. “I don’t think I can do that.”

Spider-man shrugged. “Then you’re gonna have to clean up.”

“I don’t know anything about kids.” Deadpool said. “I don’t even know anyone who knows about kids.”

Spider-man put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, you’re in luck. I know a great person who knows a lot about kids. She’d be more than willing to help you out.” He knew Aunt May would be thrilled. She was just commenting the other day that she missed having a kid in the house. 

“Okay. So. Tomorrow I find a new house for us. Tonight, I guess we get a hotel.”

Spider-man shrugged. “The couch pulls out, and she’s already asleep. Why don’t the two of you stay here tonight? Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to May.” 

Deadpool nodded. “Okay. I’ll make pancakes when we get up.”

“Awesome.” Spider-man grinned. He wasn’t sure how he was going to introduce Deadpool to Aunt May without either letting Deadpool know he was Peter, or letting Aunt May know he was Spider-man, but he’d figure that out in the morning. 


	27. Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Deadpool's out of town, Peter Parker gets kidnapped.

Most of the time, now, Deadpool patrols with Spider-man. It works for both of them; Deadpool gets to ogle Spider-man swinging around and fighting crime, and Spider-man gets back up and someone to talk to. He told Wade that while he thought he preferred to patrol alone, after spending time with Wade he found out what he really meant is that he didn’t like being under someone else’s control. The Avengers and Shield always wanted him to do things their way and according to their schedule. Deadpool was different. He’d give Peter advice, but was perfectly happy to compromise. And Peter (well, Spider-man) got someone to talk to. 

To keep the money coming in (and to keep using his skills), Deadpool takes jobs with Shield. Unlike Spider-man, it’s all on Deadpool’s terms and Shield knows it. But Deadpool’s got a skill set no one else has, so Shield’s willing to do things his way.

Which is why he was currently sitting on a rooftop in some country he couldn’t remember the name of, watching an arms deal go down through a scope. He was there just to make sure their guy got out in one piece. His deal with Peter was no assassination jobs, but if he had to kill someone to save a good guy or an innocent, Peter wouldn’t like it, but he’d understand. And, with his healing ability, he could usually get the guy out without killing anyone. Of course, after discovering that Deadpool was taking massive amounts of damage to prevent killing anyone, Peter had amended their agreement. He told Deadpool that he, _Deadpool_ , was one of the good guys. And that meant if he had to kill someone to prevent getting himself killed, Peter would prefer he killed someone to dying repeatedly. 

Deadpool grinned to himself, remembering. He wasn’t used to having anyone view him as anything other than disposable. In fact, the last time he’d sacrificed himself when Peter pointed out there were at least three other things he could have done, Peter had yelled so much and been so angry that now the boxes were on Peter’s side and gave good advice. It was pretty much the only time they did, and definitely the only time they agreed.

Two hours later, target back in the safe house no worse for wear (though a few bad guys had to be unalived when the shield team arrived to take down the group selling the weapons), Wade was ready to head back home. Traveling was nice, and getting to actually work was nice (following Spider-man around rarely needed him work hard enough to even raise his blood pressure), but he missed trading quips with Spidey. He was sure that Shield only recruited people with no sense of humor. Or maybe they just had it extracted from anyone they hired. Good thing he healed so fast, or they might try it on him.

_Better make sure they never get their hands on Baby Boy. Patrolling would be a real drag if he started talking like any of these Shield agents._

Part of him wanted to just head off and find his own way home; the plane ride with this crew would be beyond boring. But it’d be faster than the alternative; and he really wanted to see Spidey. They’d been wandering around out here for about three weeks, and that was way too long. Not to mention, there were no tacos anywhere near here and he was ready to kill for some half decent Mexican.

On the plane, he asked one of the agents what time it was in New York, and since it was only the middle of the day (and he knew Peter would either be at work or in class) he didn’t call. He could hold off. He’d be back by dinnertime in New York, and he could talk to Peter and eat tacos. So he passed the time talking to anyone who couldn’t manage to get away from him. (It was amazing how many of them suddenly needed to be in the bathroom or the cockpit.)

Then his phone rang, and it was Peter’s ringtone. “Baby boy! Why are you calling when you should be getting smart or earning tuition?”

For a moment, there was no reply on the other end. Then a strange voice answered. “Hello Deadpool. I have a proposition for you.”

Deadpool instantly went cold. “Who is this?”

The voice laughed. “That doesn’t matter. I have something you want, and if you ever want to see your, what did you call him, Baby boy? back, then you better do exactly what I say.”

“Let me talk to him.” Deadpool answered.

“So doubting! But of course you want proof. Let me put you on speaker.” The sound changed, and now Deadpool could hear background noises. “Tell your friend how you are.” The voice said.

Deadpool could hear someone breathing heavily, but nothing else. Then a _crack_ of a hand hitting flesh, someone spitting, and the voice growled. “Tell him, or you’ll regret it.”

“Baby boy, I’m coming after whoever they have. It would just help if I knew who I needed to rescue.” Deadpool growled. He noticed that all the Shield agents who had been too busy a minute ago were suddenly staring at him. He ignored them; he needed to pay attention to the phone call.

“Hey Pool.” Peter’s voice was rough. “Ran into a bit of trouble on my way to work today. There are three of them in this room, but there were about ten when I got grabbed. They….”

The phone was put off speaker, but not before Deadpool heard another _crack_. “That was stupid.” The voice said. “Now we’ll have to silence you.” Then the line went dead.

Deadpool immediately called Peter’s phone. No one answered. He dialed again. Still no answer.

Looking up, he realized he now had the attention of the entire Shield crew. He just growled at them. He did not have time to explain or deal with them.

Before he could dial again, the phone rang with Peter’s dial tone. “Hello.” He said.

“So sorry, Deadpool. We had a minor issue to deal with.”

“How is he? If you’ve hurt him…”

The voice laughed. “Now what would be the sense in that? I damage this little brat and I have no leverage on you.” 

“What makes you think you have any leverage on me now?” Deadpool laughed. 

“Because I’m not stupid.” The voice was far too smug for Deadpool.

“I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. I can tell you what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my baby boy go now, that'll be the end of it. I won’t look for you, I won’t pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

“We’ll be in touch.” The voice said, and the connection cut out.

Deadpool glared at the phone in his hands.

“Did you… Did you really just quote _Taken_ at him?” One of the agents asked.

Deadpool looked up at him and shrugged. “It seemed appropriate. Spoilers, it’s going to end the same way for him.”

Deadpool’s phone rang, but this time with Fury’s ring tone. “Hey Patches. Mission went fine.” Wade said. “Though not sure why you’re checking with me when your whole team’s on a plane with me.”

“You need help?” Fury asked.

“Why would I need help?” Deadpool laughed. 

“Something about a kidnapping?” Fury suggested.

“Now how would you know about that?” Deadpool asked, glaring around the plane. The agents all ducked their heads to avoid his gaze.

“Seems like one Peter Parker was grabbed out of his college class. Had several students report it, and since his boss is the editor of the Bugle, it’s been blasted across the news. So far, been no ransom requests or anything. Then suddenly, you’re getting phone calls from his number.”

Deadpool frowned. This was going to have to be managed carefully. Peter really didn’t want Shield knowing who he was. “He’s Spider-man’s photographer.” He said. “He’s a good kid, and since I know and like him, apparently this group thinks they can force me to do something by threatening to hurt him.”

Fury was silent for a minute. “You’re not going to let them kill him, are you?”

Deadpool took the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a minute. Then put the phone back and sighed. “Look, Squinty, besides the fact that I don’t kill the innocent, Spidey would never forgive me if I just let someone get killed. It doesn’t mean I’m going to do what they say. But I’m not going to let them kill some innocent college student.”

Fury’s frown was obvious in the tone of his voice. “But he’s not very complimentary to your pal spider-man.”

Deadpool laughed. “You obviously haven’t seen his photos. He’s incredibly complimentary to Spidey. He’s not responsible for the crap his boss adds to his photos. And even if he was, he doesn’t deserve to die for it.”

“That’s… a surprising answer.” Fury said. 

Deadpool snorted. “Look. I need to keep this line free in case they want to actually explain what they’re after. You’ve got a bunch of your agents here, you need to get me a message, go though one of them.” And he disconnected.

The rest of the trip back was in silence. Most of the Shield crew were shocked or worried at the silence; those who had worked with Deadpool before knew silence wasn’t something Deadpool was known for. Those who had had warned those who had never worked with Deadpool. Everyone knew that if Deadpool was silent, something was seriously wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC tomorrow. Unfortunately, the word of the day is "beaten", so I guess that's a bit of a spoiler.


	28. Beaten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued from yesterday, Ransom.  
> How to test a healing factor? Well, make sure it's needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry--had an outage at work and in the chaos of dealing with that I forgot to actually post my chapter. Here it is now...

_Continued from yesterday, Ransom._

Deadpool’s phone didn’t ring again the entire trip back. And he didn’t talk, either to himself or to any of the agents. He just sat, staring off into the distance.

When they landed, he wasn’t surprised to see that Fury was there to meet them. He groaned. He really was not in the mood for dealing with Fury. He needed to get home and start doing some research. On the plane with an entire crowd of Fury’s minions, he couldn’t get started. And now, here was the big man himself.

“Wilson.” And here he comes.

“Sorry tall dark and grumpy. While I admire your dedication to the mission, my part is done and I need to head home and deal with some personal matters.” Wade said, walking right by Fury.

“Wilson.” Fury barked after him. “I will have you followed if you don’t listen to what I have to say.”

Deadpool’s shoulders dropped, and his head went back in frustration. “I know the spiel. Don’t kill anyone. Don’t break any laws. Yada yada yada.” He turned and looked at Fury. “But you listen to me. You follow me, and that kid gets so much as a hangnail because you made these guys nervous, and you will never be rid of me. I’ll become your personal nightmare.” 

Fury cleared his throat. “I simply wanted to offer you any help.” He stated. “We have…”

Deadpool shook his head. “I know what your team has to offer. And right now, what I need is to find out who has him and what they want. And you are getting in my way of accomplishing that.” 

Fury sighed. “If you need…”

“If I need anything from you, other than to get out of my way, I’ll let you know.” Deadpool strode off, dialing as he walked. By the time he’d reached the road, a cab was there to pick him up, and he was gone.

In the cab, he pulled out a second phone. “Weasel. I need a trace and track on my phone.” 

“Surprised I hadn’t heard from you sooner.” Weasel said. “Heard what happened to your pet photographer.”

“Yeah. They contacted me on the way back. Didn’t want to tie up the phone and was sitting in a room full of Shield goons. Didn’t seem the best place to reach out to my team.”

Weasel snorted. “Well, thanks for that. Got it up and running. What did they want?”

“Don’t know. Just made sure I knew they had Peter and told me they’d be in touch. Want to be ready when they call.”

“Anything else?”

“Any video of the kidnapping?” Deadpool asked. 

“On it. Started as soon as I saw the news. You headed here?” 

“Yeah, be there in an hour.” Deadpool hung up and put the phone back in a pocket and went back to staring out the window.

His phone rang, Peter’s ringtone. “Hello?” He snapped.

“Hello. By now you should be away from the crew.” The voice smirked. “I assume there is no need to mention to you that this is between us and shouldn’t involve anyone else.”

“I work alone.”

“Not what I’ve seen. You pal around a lot with several different organizations, and that Spider themed hero.”

“What exactly do you want?” Deadpool didn’t feel the need to explain the difference between taking a contract and working with someone.

“We have a… project we need some help with. You’re the only one qualified to help, in fact. You help us with this, and we leave your pet photographer alive.”

“And what is this ‘project’ you need help with?” Deadpool asked.

“Well, you’ll need to come here to find out what that is.” The voice said.

“And where, exactly, is ‘here.’” Deadpool sighed. This guy was really getting on his nerves; why couldn’t bad guys ever get to the point?

“I’ll text you the address. Be here soon, or your friend here will be the worse for wear.” The phone clicked as he was disconnected.

He was on the other phone in seconds. “They’re sending me an address. Typical vague references to what they need done, but no details. Just more threats.”

“Hmmmm.” Weasel was typing in the background. “Looks like generic bad guys. Group of about 5 burst into his classroom, knew who they were after, grabbed him and left. Total of ten appear to be in the group. No uniforms or common markers at this point. Currently have system analyzing all images for tattoos, jewelry, etc. Will let you know.”

“Okay. I’ll send the address when I get it.”

Weasel snorted. “No need, dude. It shows up on that phone, I have it.”

“Could Shield be doing the same thing?” Wade asked. “Rooster Cogburn and his band of cowpokes apparently know someone called from Peter’s number to my phone.”

“Not anymore. Did a sim swap and they’ll be tracking the wrong info.” Weasel grunted. “Who do you take me for?”

“Okay. Keep me updated.”

Weasel didn’t even answer, just disconnected.

Deadpool’s phone buzzed with the address. Deadpool glanced at it, then leaned over the seat. “I need to change my drop off.” He rattled off the new address, and the driver nodded his understanding, quickly changing lanes to head to the new location.

Deadpool was not surprised in the least that the destination was an abandoned warehouse. He paid the cabbie and got out. The door was ajar, so he let himself in. The warehouse was just one enormous room, nearly empty and dark. A single light in the center of the room illuminated a ring of thugs standing around an empty chair. Deadpool strode across the floor towards the group, which parted to form a semicircle facing him. A few walked off, probably to flank him. Deadpool ignored them. Wasn’t like they could actually do anything.

“Where’s Peter?” He glared around the room. “And what’s the big secret.” Deadpool asked. “What project do you need help with?”

“We need your healing factor.” One man walked up to face Deadpool.

Deadpool snorted. “Who’d want this? I’d think the drawbacks of the horrible, constantly regenerating _cancer_ would convince you it was nothing you wanted.” His voice kept rising until he was yelling at the idiot.

“Well, see, the thing is, we’ve figured out how to get around that. And we’re going to have you demo it right now.” The man smiled.

“Where is Peter.” Deadpool asked. “You want anything from me, you better have Peter.”

The man turned and nodded to two men. “We’ll bring him out.” 

The men left through a door. Deadpool debated heading after them. He knew Peter could easily get loose, and could probably take all the idiots surrounding him with no problem. The issue was that they’d kidnapped him so publicly. There was no way he could escape without making it obvious he was Spider-man. And Peter guarded that secret more closely than KFC keeps its spice mix. Sighing, he decided to play it safe for a few more minutes and see how Peter wanted to play this.

The men returned, dragging Peter’s limp body between them. 

Deadpool had his guns out the second he saw them.

“Freeze Deadpool.” The man he’d been talking to snapped angrily. “You might want to take a look at what’s around his chest before you try anything.”

Deadpool froze. Peter had explosives strapped to him. And as the pair dragging him got closer, he could see the man was beaten black and blue.

“One of us has the trigger. You try anything, your friend dies. You want to help him, you sit your ass down in that chair and let us test out our formula on your friend here. If it works, it’ll fix him up and he’ll be fine. We let him go, and you come with us.”

Deadpool stared at him in horror. He figured it _was_ possible that they had some way to separate the cancer cells from his healthy cells, but would it really transfer his healing? He wished Peter was alert. He was the one who understood the science stuff, he’d know what to do here.

All the same, until he knew who had the trigger, he couldn’t do anything without risking Peter’s life. Even if he didn’t need to hide his identity, Spider-man couldn’t escape from explosives literally strapped to his body. 

Deadpool re-holstered his weapons, then strode to the chair indicated and sat down. The men swarmed him, removing weapons and strapping him to the chair. A table of medical equipment was pushed over, and with the number of needles and probes attached, Deadpool felt like a pincushion. A line leading from his arm fed blood into a series of machines.

“The drawback,” the lead idiot stated, “is that this must be done directly. The serum begins breaking down immediately and therefore, it cannot be harvested and transported.”

An exam table appeared from somewhere, and Peter was placed on the table and strapped down. A few minutes later, a line out of the machine was fed into Peter.

“Now what.” Wade asked.

“Now we wait to see if I am correct. If I am, your pet will heal. If not, he will either not heal or will break out in lesions similar to you.”

“I thought you said you’d solved the issue.” Wade glared at him.

“And how exactly would I test it?” The man laughed. 

Wade jerked one arm free and started to reach and pull the line out.

“I’d wait. It’s too late to prevent the worst, but it still might heal him. Then we can let him go.” The man smiled. “It’s up to you.”

Wade looked over at Peter. Other than the cuts and bruises littering his skin, he looked fine. 

Minutes passed. The head scientist kept fiddling with dials and reading measurements, but little else happened.

“Well. Look at that.” Chief creep said. “He’s already showing reduction of discoloration.”

Wade stared. It was true. The bruising was going down. 

Moments later, Peter’s eyes started fluttering, and he woke up. “Where…” He saw the crowd surrounding him and froze. 

“Hey Petey.” Wade said, wanting to make sure he knew he wasn’t alone. “This guy seems to think he’s figured out how to share my healing factor.” 

Peter turned his head and looked at Wade. “Yeah…” He said slowly. “Told me what he had planned.” He tried to lift his hand and discovered he was strapped down. He looked at Deadpool. “What’s going on?”

“Well, this shit stain is using his equipment to test his process out on you after beating the shit out of you.” Wade replied lightly.

Peter looked down. “Why? I’d heal eventually.” He said. “You hate needles.”

Wade sighed. “Well, the C4 strapped to my favorite photographer was a pretty good convincer.”

Peter looked down and could just see the explosives strapped to him. He paled. “Oh.”

“Yeah, Oh.” Wade said. “They said if it works, they’ll let you go.” _And then I’ll kill the lot of them_. He finished in his head, knowing Peter would know his plan. 

Peter snorted. “Like they’re going to let me go.”

Head creep laughed. “Drat. You figured it out.”

 _Of course he’s not going to let Peter go. Why would he get rid of his leverage?_ Deadpool closed his eyes, frustrated. 

“Well, this was clearly a success.” The man laughed. He unhooked both Peter and Wade from the equipment. “Only drawback is, we need a certain volume of blood for this to work. Means we have to wait for you to rebuild. So we’re going to put the two of you away for a bit, and ensure that there are no negative side effects of this whole process, then we’ll repeat the whole process over again.”

Tbc tomorrow. Think I’m just going to follow this storyline through the end of the month…


	29. Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The continuing adventures of SpideyPool, now with numbness and fleeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from yesterday, Beaten.
> 
> **** I woke up at 2 a.m. with the sudden realization that somewhere between the last chapter and this chapter, Peter's explosive harness just vanished. I'll have to fix that somehow...

Continued from yesterday—Beaten

****

The men swarmed around Deadpool again, disconnecting him from all the machines. He was too busy watching how they were handling Peter to notice what was going on until he felt a coldness spreading down his spine. He snapped his head around and looked at the minion who had just been behind him and who was now retreating holding a large needle. “What did you do?”

Head honcho creep laughed. “I know you can’t be trusted, so it’s a little more insurance to make sure that nothing goes wrong when we move you to the facility. Don’t worry. It won’t affect your ability to rebuild your blood supply.”

The coldness continued spreading, and with it, any ability to move. His entire body from the neck down was soon numb and stiff. 

Furious, Deadpool was forced to watch while he and Peter were loaded into an ambulance. Peter was strapped down again, but Deadpool noticed that they only used zip ties. And they'd removed the explosives. That cheered Deadpool up enormously; even though he couldn't move.

Deadpool they dumped in a corner and locked down with chains, locked to u-bolts in the floor.

Then they were locked in, in the dark. Moments later, the van pulled out.

“How you doing.” Deadpool asked.

“Fine.” Peter said. “There’s two in the van up front. Everyone else is in other vehicles. How are you doing?”

Deadpool sighed. “Can barely move my fingers.” 

“How long do you think it’s going to take?” Peter asked.

“Ten minutes at most.”

“Escape now or wait until we find out where they’re taking us?” Peter asked.

“We get wherever they’re taking us, we’re back to the keeping you secret. We do it here, they’ll blame me.” Wade said, testing his movement. He could now move his feet and fingers. Making excellent progress.

“Okay.” Peter said, then snapped the bonds on his wrist before reaching down and loosening his legs. He crawled over and looked at the chains holding Deadpool down. “Think the best route here is the lock.” He said, before snapping off the shank and removing the lock. 

While Peter unwrapped the chain, trying not to make too much noise, Deadpool kept working at moving. He could move from his elbows and knees. “Almost there.” He said.

“Well, we better move soon, since we don’t know where we’re headed or how long it’s going to take. I was out of it on the way there.” Peter said, crawling over to the wall against the front. “Sounds like they’re just listening to music. What’s the plan?”

Deadpool took a deep breath. “They took most of my weapons. Only have a few throwing knives and have limited mobility right now.”

Peter grinned. “Well, should make it interesting.” 

Deadpool pulled himself onto his feet. “Okay. At least I’m vertical now. Guess we have you rip out the back door. I’ll survive, or at least come back from, a nasty accident. I’d feel better if you were outside.”

“And out of costume.” Peter said.

“Okay. So we rip out the door to the front, you take out one guy and I get the other.” Wade looked at the divider between their area and the front. There was only a narrow door.

“I rip out the door and you take out the passenger.” Peter said. “Then I get the driver out and you take over driving.”

“Do you even know how to drive?” Deadpool asked, staggering over to the door.

“Not really the point right now, Pool.” Peter laughed. “Ready?”

Deadpool tested. He could now shrug his shoulders. “Yep. Just waiting on you.”

Peter pressed his hands to the door firmly, then yanked back and over. The door pulled out of the doorway and was over his back and landed on the gurney he’d been strapped to.

By the time he turned back, Deadpool had already grabbed the passenger and yanked him into the back. As he watched, Deadpool hit the guy upside his head and knocked him out.

Peter webbed the driver and yanked him through the door. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as smooth as Deadpool and the guy’s head cracked against the door frame. Peter winced. He was going to have quite the head ache.

The ambulance swerved heavily when Peter yanked, but before Peter could worry about it, Deadpool was in the driver’s seat and heading down the road. 

Peter crawled up into the passenger’s seat.

“Strap in baby boy. Then see if you can figure out how to turn on the siren and we’ll get out of here as fast as we can. And check those guys for phones. If we can call Weasel, he can send support.”

“Okay….” Peter looked over the dash, and a minute later the siren was wailing. Peter disappeared into the back and was back a few seconds later. “That was easy.” He said. “First pocket I checked.”

“Strap in. I’m gonna see what this thing can do.” Wade said.

Peter nodded. “Number?”

Wade rattled off Weasel’s number and Peter tapped it in while trying to keep from getting flung around and Wade swerved around cars pulling over out of their way.

“Who the fuck is this.” A very angry voice bellowed out of the phone.

Peter glanced at the phone, then stammered, “Wade asked me to call?”

“Oh. You that photographer kid?” The voice was still angry, but no longer yelling.

“Yeah, we’re currently flying down…” He looked out and saw a street sign “Hamilton Ave doing way the heck too fast in an ambulance.”

“Put Wade on.” The voice snapped.

Peter leaned over and braced one hand against the back of Deadpool’s seat, and held the phone up to his ear.

“Yeah. Just left the address you got. Probably a few more cars around us that are going to have a hard time losing us. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Bye.” Wade waved at Peter and he pulled the phone away.

“We’re going to get to big buildings. You’re going to take my mask and get high, then get home. I’m going to lead them until they get bored, or I get bored, then I’ll ditch this thing and head out after you.” Wade looked at Peter. “You get home, get your Spidey get up on, and get over to Weasel and help him track these shit stains down.”

“Thanks Wade.” Peter said.

“I’ll always come for you.” Wade said, glancing over.

“Not what I was thanking you for.” Peter said. “Thanks for not just blowing them up.”

“What makes you think that’s not the plan?” Wade asked.

“You wouldn’t let me help Weasel track them down if you were just going to kill them all.”

Wade sighed. “I guess you goody two shoes types are rubbing off on me. I figured you and Cap would want to know what else they have, and that can’t be done if I follow them home and just blow everything up.”

Peter just grinned.

“Okay. Buildings up ahead that should be big enough for you to get out and away.” Wade said, pulling his mask off and tossing it over to Peter. 

Peter nodded and pulled the mask on. He rolled down the window and glanced around. No one on his side of the car, so he climbed out and stuck to the side of the ambulance. Then, when Deadpool swung around a corner, he swung himself up onto a building and scrambled his way to the roof.

Glancing down, he saw the ambulance careening through the city, followed by two big black vehicles. No one stopped, so he figured he’d made it away without them noticing. 

Now he just needed to get home and changed. Fortunately, from experience, he knew as long as he stayed high, no one would notice what he was wearing.

****

TBC tomorrow. Gonna try to finish off two words in one day. Wish me luck!


	30. Recovery / Embrace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spider-man and Deadpool wrap things up.  
> Continued from yesterday--Numb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from yesterday—Numb. And since there are only 30 days in September and not 31, you get Recovery/Embrace in one.

It took Peter far longer than he wanted to admit to get back home and changed. He could web, but it didn’t last as long, nor was it as strong as the fluid he made. It meant he had to use his webs only when he absolutely had to, and spent a lot of time running down streets or across rooftops. If they hadn’t taken his wallet and his bag he could have called for help; or at least hired a cab. But, with no phone and no cash, he was reduced to foot travel.

Though, at one point, he did drop on the roof of a bus and made quite a few miles just holding on. He told himself he’d feel guilty about it later; right now he needed to get home.

When he did make it home, he changed and strapped on his web shooters, then (in spite of really wanting to collapse in bed) headed across town to find Weasel.

When he swung into the bar, Weasel glared at him. “Where the fuck you been?” He yelled. “And what the hell have I told you about coming through the front door?”

Spider-man walked over and collapsed on a stool at the bar. “What? I came as soon as I could. Wade said you needed help tracking some guys down.” He glanced around the room. “And it doesn’t look like there is anyone else here at the moment.”

“They stole that cute little photographer friend of Wade’s. I thought he said you were watching the kid while he was out of town. Now I find out you’re too busy to watch him?” Weasel threw his hands up in the air. “Next time I’m assigning my own bodyguard when he’s gone. I am not going through this again.”

Spider-man stared at him. _No. This is not good._ Then he sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to Wade, we’ll arrange something better for next time, okay?”

Weasel slapped the bar. “You better.” Then he turned and walked away from the bar and into the back room. A second later he poked his head back out. “You coming to help or are you too good to help search?”

Spider-man jumped off the stool and hurried after him. 

The back room was wall to wall electronics. Weasel pointed him at a wall of monitors. “That controls the images. I’ve hacked into the CCTV in the area where I last saw the cars following Wade. They were not amused when they found just him in the ambulance, let me tell you. You got eight eyes or something, you’re in charge of watching all the monitors and finding out where they went.”

“I’m not an actual Spider.” Spider-man protested, but sat himself down and started scrolling through cameras, following the black vehicles from where they caught up to the ambulance. He was temporarily horrified when he saw the shoot out. The goons appeared to want to capture Deadpool, but without having to watch out for Peter Parker, Deadpool was having none of it. He did kill one, but Peter wasn’t sure that was actually Deadpool. He was pretty sure the guy dodged Deadpool’s bullet and ended up jumping in front of a bullet from someone on his team.

The team eventually gave up, jumped back into their vehicles, and fled. Peter managed to track them all the way back to…and why wasn’t he surprised. Osborn Industries. What the heck was Harry up to now? Maybe he’d given up on Spider-man. While that was good for Spider-man, that could be….

He was interrupted as the door burst open and Deadpool strode into the room. “Weasel.” The man was using his business voice, which Peter did _not_ find hot. Anyone who says so is lying.

Spider-man looked up and saw Deadpool freeze when he saw Spider-man. “Hello Pool. Tracked those cars back to Osborn Industries.”

“Shit.” Deadpool said. “You positive?”

Spider-man nodded. “You left some pretty distinctive marks on one of the cars. They apparently didn’t know what Weasel’s capabilities are.” He nodded towards the man, who just grunted at him. 

Deadpool shrugged. “I’m the best at what I do, he’s the best at what he does.”

Spider-man nodded. “I see that. Good thing Stark doesn’t know about him.”

“Hey!” Weasel yelled, jumping to his feet.

Spider-man put his hands up, “No! He’ll never find it out from me! In fact, I’m glad that in case Stark or Shield ever go bad we’ve got someone who can take them on!”

Deadpool laughed, and Weasel dropped back into his seat, grumbling.

“So what next.” Spider-man asked.

Deadpool shrugged. “Two options. One, we go in, find out what they have and what they know, then blow them up. Two, we call in Shield and have them go in and hopefully find out what they have and what they know. Then deal with the idiots.”

Spider-man shook his head. “No. Three options. Three, we go in, find out what they have and what they know and destroy it. Then turn some of that info over to Shield and have them go in and deal with the idiots.”

Weasel laughed. “I see why you like him. That makes the most sense.”

The next few hours were a rush for Spider-man as they planned their attack on Osborn. As soon as it was dark, Deadpool and Spider-man headed over to the building. The break in was easy. And locating the data was pretty straight-forward, since they knew the stuff won’t be on any of the public levels. 

Deadpool plugged the dongle that Weasel had set up for them into the lab computer. It immediately connected and started uploading everything. When finished, it would wipe the whole system. Weasel had assured them it would also wipe any connected back up systems, so all they had to do was destroy any hard copies.

The two searched the labs and offices while they wanted for the program to finish. Peter found a few bottles of acid, and used them to destroy all samples he found. He wasn’t sure who they were from, asa they were all labeled in code, but he didn’t really care. 

Deadpool took a more direct approach, smashing containers or crushing them underfoot.

When the program beeped, letting them know they were done, Deadpool pulled the dongle and they headed out.

Spider-man swung them back towards the bar, but stopped on a roof top two blocks away. “Did you leave them a surprise?” He asked Deadpool.

Deadpool rested his chin on Spider-man’s shoulder. “Maybe…” He said.

Spider-man laughed. “How long?”

“Should be right about…. now.” Deadpool said.

A few seconds later there was a loud _whumph_ sound from the direction they’d come. 

“How bad?” Spider-man asked.

Deadpool shrugged. “Special mixture I made for this kind of situation. The explosion isn’t too bad, but it fills the whole area with a caustic agent that should do a great job of destroying any biological materials. No fingerprints, no DNA, no samples.”

“Nice.” Spider-man turned and hugged the merc. “Thanks. Now let’s go find out what they had and turn them over to Shield.” 


End file.
